Was my mother the child of a Catholic priest?

Vivien Prior's mother had long suspected she was the secret child of a Catholic priest but her daughter had no proof.

It was not until the 1990s that Vivien first saw a photo of the man she thinks is her grandfather.

"I was quite shocked to see the likeness - to see the photograph and think, 'of course mum was right - of course he's her father'," Vivien says.

Her grandmother Georgina was housekeeper to Father Joseph Brough, a Catholic priest who served in Carnoustie and Dundee for almost 40 years after being ordained in 1909.

She believes her mother Josephine was born in secret in 1928, before being put into foster care in Suffolk, hundreds of miles away in the south-east of England.

Vivien says: "Of course, mum was suspicious, because she was named after him, wasn't she? Her name was Josephine."

Ordained Roman Catholic priests take a vow of clerical celibacy and are not permitted to enter into sexual relationships.

Vivien, who is now 65, says: "I have no idea really about their lives at all, and I am probably never going to find out, because there is nobody alive now who knew them personally."

But she would like answers on why Father Brough had no appointment in the Church between 1928 and 1932 - something that coincided with the period immediately after her mother's birth.

"The official version from the Catholic church is that it was a leave of absence because of ill health, but I don't know how reliable that is," she says.

"Whether it was because he had to take that leave of absence, whether he was in disgrace, whether he had to go away and contemplate his career - that is the kind of thing I'd like to know really, I'd like to find out more about it."

Coping International is an organisation which advocates for children of clergy and it believes there are thousands of people around the world who are children of priests.

Its founder Vincent Doyle set up the organisation in 2011 after discovering his own father was a priest.

"I thought to myself there is no way that I am the only one," he says.

The common experience for those contacting his organisation is that "they were told 'you are an absolutely unique phenomenon, children of priests don't exist'.

"For some reason I never believed that, because it made no sense to me."

He says many children of clergy experience a "sense of shame", which often comes from within their own families.

Through his work, Mr Doyle travelled to the Vatican in 2017, and said he was shown an internal document which outlines how to deal with priests who father children. The Vatican has confirmed the existence of the document.

Vivien's mother Josephine died in 2016 and could never confirm her suspected real father's identity, though she always suspected it was Father Brough.

Josephine's mother Georgina, who had been Father Brough's housekeeper, died from TB when she was just 35 - before Josephine discovered she was really her mother.

Georgina would travel from Scotland to Suffolk to visit her daughter, under the guise of being her aunt.

Before his death in 1947, Josephine went to Father Brough and asked him directly if he was her father - something he denied.

One thing Vivien has been able to discover through census records is in 1939 - when Josephine was 11 and living hundreds of miles away in Suffolk - Georgina was living in Scotland with Father Brough.

Vivien says: "I think it made her quite a tough person, because there was quite a stigma back in the 1930s to be illegitimate, and it was assumed she was illegitimate, because she was living with foster parents."

Until recently, the only proof to back up Josephine's suspicions was a photograph discovered in the 1990s which showed a likeness between the two of them.

There have been frustrated attempts to access further records.

Vivien was provided with a short notice published after Father Brough's death in 1947, but then told all other records which could have held key information were burnt by the bishop of the time upon his retirement.

"I feel there must be more information," says Vivien.

"And just being told there isn't because it has been destroyed, or it just doesn't exist, it just makes you question that really and wonder if that is reliable information or not."

In 2018, Vivien used DNA testing to trace her ancestors online.

Through a common descendant, AncestryDNA found a match with Thomas Brough - Joseph Brough's grandfather.

While it is not definitive proof of a link to Joseph Brough, a spokeswoman for AncestryDNA said the ancestral match is "incredibly reliable".

"If you and another person are matches, it means that you both share DNA from one or more recent common ancestors and are related in some way," she said.

"It's just a shame really that we got more confirmation after mum had died," Vivien says.

While most of the main characters in this part of her family's story may be dead, Vivien's hope to discover the truth continues.

"There are members of my family that look on it as a romantic love story," she says.

"But I'm not so sure about that really because I think to give up your baby at six weeks old to foster parents, that's a huge wrench, isn't it?"

In response to Vivien's story, a spokesperson for the Catholic church said "while it is not possible to comment on an allegation made almost a century ago, about someone who died 75 years ago" the Diocese of Dunkeld had "in good faith" passed on all records it holds.