800 children buried in Tuam

[sphericalfox]

Not sure if everyone has seen this news story, but here it is:

 

 

A Catholic archbishop in the Republic of Ireland has said the church has no records about the burial of nearly 800 children at a mother and baby home.

The remains were in a disused concrete septic tank at the County Galway home. The children, aged between two days and nine years, died between 1925 and 1961.

The grave in Tuam was found nearly 40 years ago, but was initially thought to be from the 1850s famine.

Archbishop of Tuam Michael Neary said he was "greatly shocked" by the news.

"I was greatly shocked, as we all were, to learn of the extent of the numbers of children buried in the graveyard in Tuam.

"I was made aware of the magnitude of this situation by media reporting and historical research.

"I am horrified and saddened to hear of the large number of deceased children involved and this points to a time of great suffering and pain for the little ones and their mothers."

The home was run by nuns of the Bon Secours Sisters.

Archbishop Neary said that regardless of the time lapse involved it was a matter of great public concern that "ought to be acted upon urgently."

"As the diocese did not have any involvement in the running of the home in Tuam, we do not have any material relating to it in our archives.

"I understand that the material which the Bon Secours Sisters held, as managers of the mother and baby home, was handed over to Galway County Council and the health authorities in 1961.

"While the Archdiocese of Tuam will cooperate fully, nonetheless there exists a clear moral imperative on the Bon Secours Sisters in this case to act upon their responsibilities in the interest of the common good."

He said he would make it a priority to work with the families of the deceased, to obtain a "dignified re-interment" of the remains of the children in consecrated ground in Tuam.

Another congregation of nuns, which ran three mother and baby homes, has said it would welcome an independent inquiry into the burial of babies and children in unmarked graves.

The Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary ran homes in Sean Ross Abbey in County Tipperary, Bessborough near Cork city and Castlepollard, County Westmeath.

In a statement to RTÉ News, a spokesperson for the congregation said they would be happy to take part in such an inquiry to establish the truth about what it called a "very sad chapter in the history of Irish society".

'Scandal of significant proportion'

Fianna Fáil TD (member of parliament) Colm Keaveney, whose home town is Tuam, said the burial of the children in a septic tank was "horrendous" and a "scandal of significant proportion".

"I've called on the government to make a formal apology to the women involved and take whatever action necessary to unearth the truth," he said.

"We need to hear a formal statement from the taoiseach (prime minister) of this country about plans to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of these children.

"These infants were Irish citizens, their treatment and the treatment of their mothers, was grossly unacceptable."

The remains were originally thought to be those of victims of the Irish famine, however, local historian Catherine Corless found that the register of deaths and burials in the town did not match.

"I went to the births, deaths, marriages registration office in Galway and I asked them would they have records of the children who died at the home," she told the BBC.

"When she came back to me, she said, 'We have the records... but there's quite a number.'"

"I was staggered and I was shocked because there's a total number of 796 babies, children and toddlers buried in one mass grave there on that site."

Funds are now being raised to erect a permanent memorial to the dead children.

'Shocking revelations'

Ireland's Catholic Church has recently been affected by a series of allegations of abuse and neglect of children who were in its care.

People initially thought the grave was for remains of famine victims

"Many of the revelations are deeply disturbing and a shocking reminder of a darker past in Ireland when our children were not cherished as they should have been," said Children's Minister Charlie Flanagan.

"I am particularly mindful of the relatives of those involved and of local communities."

The Tuam home was one of 10 institutions in which about 35,000 unmarried pregnant women - so-called fallen women - are thought to have been sent.

The children of these women were denied baptism and segregated from others at school. If they died at such facilities, they were also denied a Christian burial.

County Galway death records showed that most of the children buried in the unmarked grave had died of sickness or malnutrition.

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a commentary on the story. The discussion below it is interesting. I wondered what the perspective is from outside Ireland.

 

 

[sphericalfox]

Here's the commentary:

 

“CHERISH ALL THE children equally†is a defining Irish shibboleth, enshrined in the Proclamation of Independence. It is one of our highest aspirations and, like most of the things we Irish hold dearest, it is build on a solid foundation of utter hypocrisy.

Cherish all the children? By all available evidence, we Irish don’t even like children.

In the past week, a horror story has unfolded. Eight hundred children are buried in an unmarked mass grave in Tuam, Co Galway, in a disused septic tank on the former grounds of an institution known locally as “The Homeâ€. The Bon Secours nuns operated “The Home†between 1926 and 1961 and over the years housed thousands of unmarried mothers and their “illegitimate†children.

The tireless work of historian Catherine Corless has revealed that 796 children, the oldest nine years, the youngest two days old, are in that tank. Causes of death include “malnutrition, measles, convulsions, tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and pneumoniaâ€. The tank is described as “filled to the brim with tiny bones and skullsâ€.

On Liveline during the week, a clear picture emerged. Unmarried mothers incarcerated until they signed over their babies, healthy children sold to be adopted by wealthy Americans and disabled infants, who had no sale value, abandoned in “Dying Roomsâ€, and their bodies dumped by the brides of Christ in a septic tank.

This was a nationwide industry founded on human suffering. In a country utterly corrupted by its own twisted version of Catholicism and run by a complicit elite, young women who “fell pregnant†were condemned. They had sinned and were left to the mercy of perverts and brutes. Their children were a tainted commodity to be sold or discarded at the whim of people considered “religiousâ€.

A further horror is that it seems highly unlikely Tuam was the only mother and baby home which starved infants and crammed their tiny bodies into unmarked graves. The dead children must number in the thousands.

To quote Bob Dylan, “Even Jesus would never forgive what you doâ€.

What was once “The Home†is now a housing estate. There are real homes there now, proper homes where families live and children play. I hope it’s a happy place.

Expect the usual Defenders of the Faith to trot out their well-practised â€few bad apples†lines. â€The vast majority of Catholic institutions did great good for Irish children,†they’ll tell us. They’ll wring their hands and drip sincerely that times were different then and nobody knew how bad it was, but the simple truth is they’ll be wrong, perhaps wilfully wrong, to say nobody knew.

We knew. We just didn’t care.

In 1946, Ireland’s culture of cruelty and indifference to the most vulnerable was condemned by the most famous priest in the world and we ignored him.

The internationally-acclaimed hero of “Boys Townâ€, Roscommon-born Father Edward Flanagan, visited the land of his birth and was horrified by what he saw here, denouncing Ireland’s treatment of children in Church and State care as “a scandal, un-Christlike, and wrongâ€.

Flanagan, a reluctant celebrity since the 1938 film starring Spencer Tracey had immortalised him, had founded Boys Town in 1917 as a centre of education and shelter for poor and neglected boys in Omaha, Nebraska. His philosophy was simple and powerful: “There is no such thing as a bad boyâ€.

Father Flanagan treated those in his care with compassion and respect and his kindness showed such success that he became known as “the world’s foremost expert on boys’ training and youth care.â€

Flanagan told a public meeting in Cork’s Savoy Cinema: “You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it.†Calling Ireland’s institutions “a disgrace to the nation,†he said “I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character.â€

Nobody listened.

In the Dáil, the then Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland, dismissed Flanagan’s reports of children beaten with “the cat o’ nine tails, the rod, and the fistâ€.

“I was not disposed to take any notice of what Monsignor Flanagan said while he was in this country,†Boland told said, “because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance to them.â€

Nobody listened.

But of course we’ve changed now, 70 years later. We’ve learned from the mistakes of the past and we really do cherish all the children now, don’t we?

Well, we’ve just had the European and Local Elections and turnout was good, by our standards: 57% of the electorate went to the polls to administer a kicking to the Government. Compare that to the 2012 Children’s Rights Referendum. For all our guff about cherishing children, when we were offered the chance to enshrine their rights in the Constitution, only 33.5% of us could be bothered to vote.

On his return to the US, Father Flanagan addressed his Irish countrymen and women:

“What you need over there is to have someone shake you loose from your smugness and satisfaction and set an example by punishing those who are guilty of cruelty, ignorance and neglect of their duties in high places… I wonder what God’s judgment will be with reference to those who hold the deposit of faith and who fail in their God-given stewardship of little children.â€

Donal O’Keeffe is a writer and artist who sometimes contributes to the Evening Echo. He tweets as @Donal_OKeeffe

[Jon the Hat]

A glimpse into a world of true horror.  Sadly the blanket of respectablility of the Catholic Chruch allowed and hid all manner of evil.

[Parafox]

Awful that a "religious" body, (said to have the highest number of followers in the world), would allow this to happen but, in the 1920's up to the second world war Ireland was virtually a 3rd world country.

 

The Catholic Church then was all powerful and the arrogance that power engendered denied the real people human rights, justice and respect.

 

Question the Catholic Church and you were doomed to eternal damnation. The church ruled the uneducated populous through fear and by intimidation and although supposedly more enlightened in modern times, this is still largely true.

[Steve_Guppy_Left_Foot]

Buggered and buried. Sounds about right for the Catholic church to me.

[Ross-Kemp]

Catholics & children just don't go well together do they...

[sphericalfox]

Awful that a "religious" body, (said to have the highest number of followers in the world), would allow this to happen but, in the 1920's up to the second world war Ireland was virtually a 3rd world country.

 

The Catholic Church then was all powerful and the arrogance that power engendered denied the real people human rights, justice and respect.

 

Question the Catholic Church and you were doomed to eternal damnation. The church ruled the uneducated populous through fear and by intimidation and although supposedly more enlightened in modern times, this is still largely true.

 

A lot of factors aided the church in the manner it ran the country, and held the Irish populous captive. Terrorism on a grand scale.

[Guest MattP]

Buggered and buried. Sounds about right for the Catholic church to me.

 

[Tielemans63]

My dad left Ireland because he hated the Catholic faith he grew up in. To this day some of his brothers and sisters won't talk to him because of it.

The worst thing is that this will simply be another addition to the 'list of things we'll pretend didn't happen'. If everyone there chooses to live in denial what can you do?

[Steven]

It has all gone downhill since independence.

 

Seriously what if these bodies were found near a Mosque, we would never hear the end of it. A good case for banning "religions" especially after all the previous of the Catholic church on the basis they are essentially evil.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

The Catholic Church has a long history of appalling misdemeanour's. 

[howlinmadmurfdoc]

I know the films aren't quite on the same degree as this but the magdalene sisters and philomena show how people were treated like crap.

[Steven]

Not for the faint hearted.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ireland-mass-graves-unearthing-one-of-the-darkest-chapters-in-irish-history-9503897.html