Under the Rose: A Confession

Flavia Alaya was twenty-two years old, a radiant but sheltered young woman on a Fulbright in Italy, when she met Father Harry Browne. When their attraction for each other grew too compelling to resist, they forged a relationship that violated one of the most powerful taboos of society, the Catholic Church, and her traditional Italian American family, yet endured for over twenty years. By day, they were subsumed in progressive community organizing on New York's West Side. By night, they were subsumed in a relationship carried out, even through the birth of their three children, in absolute secrecy -- sub rosa, or "under the rose."