Mass grave of babies found at Catholic home for unwed mothers

[9-10ths_Penguin]

This made the news today: the remains of 800 babies were found in a septic tank on the property of a home for unwed mothers in Ireland that was run by a Catholic religious order.

In a town in western Ireland, where castle ruins pepper green landscapes, there’s a six-foot stone wall that once surrounded a place called the Home. Between 1925 and 1961, thousands of “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children passed through the Home, run by the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam.

[...]

More than five decades after the Home was closed and destroyed — where a housing development and children’s playground now stands — what happened to nearly 800 of those abandoned children has now emerged: Their bodies were piled into a massive septic tank sitting in the back of the structure and forgotten, with neither gravestones nor coffins.

[...]

According to documents Corless provided the Irish Mail on Sunday, malnutrition and neglect killed many of the children, while others died of measles, convulsions, TB, gastroenteritis and pneumonia. Infant mortality at the Home was staggeringly high.

[...]

Special kinds of neglect and abuse were reserved for the Home Babies, as locals call them. Many in surrounding communities remember them. They remember how they were segregated to the fringes of classrooms, and how the local nuns accentuated the differences between them and the others. They remember how, as one local told the Irish Central, they were “usually gone by school age — either adopted or dead.”

Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers - The Washington Post

This adds on to the accounts of physical abuse, slavery, and other mistreatment in the country's Magdalene laundries.

 

[Nyingjé Tso]

Unfortunately that is not new thing... while working into renovating a nun monastery in Spain, my grandfather found the bodies of dead babies inside the walls... And was threatened to keep silent about it so that it don't make the news. He always say that since that day, he didn't stopped believing in God, but he certainly didn't believed the church anymore.

Who knows how much are still left inside these walls... Sad.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Unfortunately that is not new thing... while working into renovating a nun monastery in Spain, my grandfather found the bodies of dead babies inside the walls... And was threatened to keep silent about it so that it don't make the news. He always say that since that day, he didn't stopped believing in God, but he certainly didn't believed the church anymore.

Who knows how much are still left inside these walls... Sad.

Spain was also where religious orders engaged in human trafficking on an industrial scale, kidnapping as many as 300,000 babies from their unwed mothers. The women were told that the babies had died, but were actually sold to adoptive parents.

BBC documentary exposes 50-year scandal of baby trafficking by the Catholic church in Spain | Mail Online

 

[Nymphs]

This is just so sad.

 

[LuisDantas]

Wow. I did not know about that. Terrible!

 

[dawny0826]

This made the news today: the remains of 800 babies were found in a septic tank on the property of a home for unwed mothers in Ireland that was run by a Catholic religious order.



Bodies of 800 babies, long-dead, found in septic tank at former Irish home for unwed mothers - The Washington Post

This adds on to the accounts of physical abuse, slavery, and other mistreatment in the country's Magdalene laundries.

Sad on several accounts.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Somebody better be charged over that!

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Somebody better be charged over that!

Considering the lack of criminal charges that came out of the Ryan Commission, I have absolutely no confidence that that will ever happen.

 

[Altfish]

The worrying thing is that you almost become immune to such stories about the Catholic Church.:sorry1:

 

[beenie]

Wow that is just horrifying.

 

[Magic Man]

A couple things.

1) I saw that a lot of people were calling for an investigation, saying things like "A memorial? How about an investigation instead?". What the heck should the investigate? The place closed over 50 years ago.

2) It's sad to see this kind of thing coming from nuns (much less anyone else). How do you treat kids this way? As if the kids are at fault for what the parents did?

 

[Amechania]

Well thank Heaven the girls didn't have access to abortion! That would've been a sin!

 

[Jainarayan]

There was a story in People Magazine recently (hey, I was in a doctor's waiting room reading it! ) about the daughter of one of those unwed mothers. They were eventually re-united, but the treatment and mental and emotional abuse the mother received was an abomination.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Well, a representative of the Catholic Church has weighed in on all this. Apparently, it's unfair to judge the early 20th Century by the standards of today:

I suppose we can’t really judge the past from our point of view, from our lens. All we can do is mark it appropriately and make sure there is a suitable place here where people can come and remember the babies that died.

Irish Archdiocese Official Reacts to 800 Children’s Skeletons in a Sewage Tank: “We Can’t Judge the Past”

Hmm.

 

[Fireside_Hindu]

This sort of thing happened a lot in Ireland. Unwed mothers (or sometimes women who were just thought of as being too "pretty" and flirtatious) were sent to "homes" - which ended up being more like mini-labor camps. There children were taken from them and they were forced to work the rest of their lives in terrible conditions.

Magdalene asylum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

:camp:

 

[Vouthon]

This sort of thing happened a lot in Ireland. Unwed mothers or sometimes women who were just thought of as being too "pretty" and flirtatious) were sent to "homes" - which ended up being more like mini-labor camps. There children were taken from them and they were forced to work the rest of their lives in terrible conditions.

Magdalene asylum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

:camp:

The main problem in my opinion was twofold:

1) The unhealthy closeness between Church and State after independence in Ireland, that was not replicated in many other demographically Catholic countries (except perhaps in Franco's Spain, although he was a bit of a caesaropapist). This gave clergy too much power over the lives of parishioners, making it a coveted position for power-hungry men who sought authority and prestige. Where the Church is not so dominant, it tends to be more cognizant of its mission and teachings because the priesthood becomes a purely spiritual vocation to one's flock. That's why I ideally support the secular or neutral state. It keeps both state and church purer.

2) The culture that elevated clergy and church institutions to an unhealthy level, without scrutiny or questioning, in addition to a broader conservative religious climate of shame felt towards children born to mothers in "sin" and a contemptible lack of compassion for both the mothers and children. A religious-cultural fundamentalism and a collaboration between clergy and state in maintaining such a climate.

The entire situation is damnable and heart-breaking.

 

[fantome profane]

Well, a representative of the Catholic Church has weighed in on all this. Apparently, it's unfair to judge the early 20th Century by the standards of today:



Irish Archdiocese Official Reacts to 800 Children’s Skeletons in a Sewage Tank: “We Can’t Judge the Past”

Hmm.

Makes you wonder just where we put this temporal divide. We can't judge the period from 1925-1961 by today's standards. Ok, can we judge the 1970's? Can we judge the 1990's? How about 2012? Is if fair to judge events from 2012 with the standards of 2014?

 

[Twilight Hue]

Seems a rather sterile statement coming from a man of the cloth.

Although it's hard to perceive any human reaction from an article, it leads one to wonder where's the anger, sadness, and concern by way of response by Father Finton Monaghan stating, "We can't judge the past." ?

Givin the dates put forth, some of the clergy involved could very well be still alive.

 

[Nymphs]

The worrying thing is that you almost become immune to such stories about the Catholic Church.:sorry1:

It's how I feel about a lot of religions and their seedy (and continuing to be seedy) past.

 

[The Adept]

Ah they have found the bodies...in a Mary Topeth. Which is a sewage tank.