laumandoline -- magdalene dndries, as they were called. justice may come today when an official report reveals how much successive irish governments knew about this. >> this is her life in the mag dalene laundries, as presented to the outside world -- a place where troubled girls would be cared for. some had fallen pregnant, often through abuse. others were since he recruited for their labor. >> everything was taken from me. my rights as a children. my right to communicate with -- as a child. my rights to communicate with other people. >> there is a memorial to thousands of women who lived, worked, and often died in the labor laundries of ireland. they were nicknamed the nag -- magdalene's, often named as prostitutes. >> she was effectively kidnapped. she was driven under false pretenses into 20 years of effective slavery and incarceration. >> today's report will concentrate on what the authorities knew about what was really happening in the laundries. >> the state was involved in the mandoline -- magdalene laundries in numerous respects.

in the center of france, the major starting point was the church of mary magdalene at vezelay.his great romanesque abbey church at vezelay in the heart of burgundy is built far too large for the needs of its local population. paul crossley is a distinguished architectural historian whose special interest is romanesque and gothic architecture. it served primarily two functions. it housed a large and prosperous community of benedictine monks, and secondly and most importantly, it was one of the foremost places of pilgrimage in france, for here was contained the relics of saint mary magdalene. thousands of pilgrims came through the western portals of this church, and they found themselves in a sacred way... a long avenue of arches and aisles which led them to the distant and luminous choir where the body of saint mary magdalene was contained. the devout mediev christian, holy r h the power to perform miracles. even the tiest fragment of the body of a snt encased in its riqry rapresented the power, the presence of the saint. much of the art of the time was geared to the cult of sai

in ireland, the government is about to be given a long awaited report into the so called magdalene laundryal. run by catholic nuns, it forced thousands of girls and women to work as slave labor under the pretense of offering them moral guidance. >> the buildings that hosted the magdalene laundries stand as monuments of religious and state sponsor brutality. in these places orders of catholic nuns carry out the greatest contra imaginable, taking in women on the pretext of looking after them and getting rich on their forced labor. places like this have had hundreds of girls and young women coming to work in the laundry. some might have been sent in disgrace because they became pregnant, others might have been orphans or babies. some were sent by the court for getting into trouble with the law. some were sent by their own parents. the thing they all had in common was the sense that they were here voluntarily, for their own moral good. >> this is the official form that accompanied margaret in at the age of two. look at the wording, she was charged, as if with a criminal offense, of having a fa

the same time be able to connect with human beings and still love them the way jesus loved mary magdalen. yes, that's my answer. yes, it can be done. the college of cardinals is capable of finding such a pope. the one absolute demand that i put forward is that they make the effort. no caving to the most conservative or most cautious or some cute selection from someone of a hitherto unknown home of a pope. we've had two popes in a row from countries where they grew up under oppression. perhaps that explains their inability to unshackle the church from the past. people who are repressed in their religion tend to be very conservative. here's hoping prayer is really in order here. that the next leader of the catholic church has something of john the xxiii in him and the birth of paul vi and the role of women in the churnl. lots needs to be done. god bless our next pope. god bless the decision on how to pick him. and that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "politics nation" with al sharpton starts right now. >> thanks, chris: and thanks to you for tuning in. >>> tonight's lead, r