Almost 800 'forgotten' Irish children dumped in septic tank mass grave at Cathol

[Somamech]

I am so glad I had a mispent youth where I fended for myself and it was possible to do so.

A septic tank was used to dump the bodies of almost 800 babies and children in Ireland near a home for unmarried mothers run by nuns, new research has shown, throwing more light on the Irish Catholic Church's troubled past.

Death records suggest 796 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, were dumped in a septic tank near a Catholic-run home for unmarried mothers, turning it into in a mass grave. The deaths occurred during the 35 years the home operated from 1925 to 1961.

This factual event is really sickening. 

SOURCE:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-05/almost-800-irish-children-dumped-in-septic-tank-mass-grave/5501482

[Somamech]

The worst thing is that i listened to an interview with a lassy and where she said that the Catholic Church are saying that "you cannot judge the past with the present" ?

More links:

UK's largest child abuse inquiry begins in Northern Ireland

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-14/northern-ireland-child-abuse-inquiry-begins/5198500

Ireland: mass grave

For more than three decades the bodies of 796 children, aged between two days and nine years, were dumped in a sewage tank in County Galway. The mass grave, of the children who died between 1925 and 1961, was discovered recently by historian Catherine Corless.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/ireland3a-mass-grave/5503300


Tuam mother-and-baby home is a scandal of church and state

The revelations of the mass grave of babies in Tuam is horrifying and the Taoiseach must launch a full-scale national inquiry, writes Susan Lohan

Perhaps you recall the row in Leinster House in December 2012 between our Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Gerry Adams over the 1972 disappearance and murder by the IRA of widow and mother of 10, Jean McConville?

In that row, Enda Kenny said: "I would love to hear you speak the truth about some elements of your past. You might someday tell the truth about the tragedy and the remorse and about the compassion that should have been shown for Jean McConville. Maybe you might do that, Deputy Adams?"

Frankly, this is what the country now requires from our leader with regard to the disappearance, death, and dumping of 800 infants and children from the former mother-and-baby home in Tuam and for every other mass grave on or near the grounds of every other former mother-and-baby home throughout Ireland.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/tuam-mother-and-baby-home-is-a-scandal-of-church-and-state-271013.html

[Somamech]

How anyone can defend the Catholic "version of a good life these day's" is beyond me.

I don' have a problem with people having faith.. we all need faith in LIFE... But to follow such a crooked organisation which is a the Roman Catholic Church/Scammers/ORI is something some may want to think a little harder about

[Back]

Where did Sinny OP go? I cant see it now or I am confused

Bless
Back

[sky otter]

when i first read this it made me sick.. still does..
it is why i scream about ANY organized religion..not a belief in god.. not spirituality
but organized religion..
just another political system that crosses borders .. a system that makes you hate..and not trust  others who haven't been converted to your religion..
a system that says the other folks are wrong and can't get what you have been told you have or will get
kill them if they don't agree..
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

those poor kids who because they couldn't be baptised (a man made decree).. they couldn't be buried in special ground so they could just be tossed away like so much garbage

when will we understand that we all have worth  and that the
differences are for learning not hating and killing
when are we going to see that religions were set up by men to dominate and get rich
god didn't create religions..men did


Tuam children's bodies: Catholic Church 'has no records'
5 June 2014 Last updated at 05:51 ET .

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.

"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.



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27710206

[Amaterasu]

I love how all the statements make it an "Irish" tragedy, and never mention it as a Catholic one.

Psyop right there.

[sky otter]

well here is the follow up..
just more proof to not believe everything you read.. if you needed such proof...



Media exaggerated horror tale at Irish orphanage

AP  10 hr ago |By SHAWN POGATCHNIK of Associated Press


DUBLIN (AP) — Revelations this month that nuns had buried nearly 800 infants and young children in unmarked graves at an Irish orphanage during the last century caused stark headlines and stirred strong emotions and calls for investigation. Since then, however, a more sober picture has emerged that exposes how many of those headlines were wrong.

The case of the Tuam "mother and baby home" offers a study in how exaggeration can multiply in the news media, embellishing occurrences that should have been gripping enough on their own.

The key fact is that a researcher, Catherine Corless, spent years seeking records of all the children who died in the orphanage in County Galway during its years of operation from 1925 to 1961. She found 797 death records — and only one record that one of the youngsters had been buried alongside relatives in a Catholic cemetery.

The rest, Corless surmised, were likely interred in unmarked graves on the orphanage grounds, including in a disused septic tank. She and other Tuam residents called for a state-funded investigation to identify remains and give the children a proper memorial.

The reports of unmarked graves shouldn't have come as a surprise to the Irish public, who for decades have known that some of the 10 defunct "mother and baby homes," which chiefly housed the children of unwed mothers, held grave sites filled with forgotten dead.

The religious orders' use of unmarked graves reflected the crippling poverty of the time, the infancy of most of the victims, and the lack of plots in cemeteries corresponding to the children's fractured families.

Until recent weeks, nobody had put a precise number on the fatalities at Tuam. Corless spent months — and more than 3,000 euros ($4,000) of her own money — buying copies of death certificates and organizing them.

Her list of the dead shows that nearly 80 percent were younger than 1; two died within 10 minutes of birth and never received first names. Ninety-one died in the 1920s, 247 in the 1930s, 388 in the 1940s, 70 in the 1950s, and one more child in 1960. The most common causes were flu, measles, pneumonia, tuberculosis and whooping cough. Contrary to the allegations of widespread starvation highlighted in some reports, only 18 children were recorded as suffering from severe malnutrition.

While publicly available records are incomplete, sporadic inspection reports indicate that the orphanage's population exceeded 250 throughout the worst years of child mortality, when overcrowding would have encouraged the spread of infection.

When Corless published her findings on a Facebook campaign page, and Irish media noticed, she speculated to reporters that the resting place of most, if not all, could be inside a disused septic tank on the site. By the time Irish and British tabloids went to print in early June, that speculation had become a certainty, the word "disused" had disappeared, and U.S. newspapers picked up the report, inserting more errors, including one that claimed the researcher had found all 796 remains in a septic tank.

The Associated Press was among the media organizations that covered Corless and her findings, repeating incorrect Irish news reports that suggested the babies who died had never been baptized and that Catholic Church teaching guided priests not to baptize the babies of unwed mothers or give to them Christian burials.

The reports of denial of baptism later were contradicted by the Tuam Archdiocese, which found a registry showing that the home had baptized more than 2,000 babies. The AP issued a corrective story on Friday after discovering its errors.

Brendan O'Neill, editor of the London-based online magazine Spiked, said journalists worldwide "got a whiff of Corless's findings and turned them into the stuff of nightmares." He noted that several top newspapers in the United States stated that 800 baby skeletons had been found in a septic tank, and that commentators fueled by a "Twitter mob" mentality compared the deaths to Nazi-era genocide.

The Irish Times in Dublin interviewed Corless about why she thought the former septic tank could have become a bone repository. She explained that her assertion was based on the study of old site maps and the 40-year-old recollections of two local men who, as boys, had found an underground chamber on the site containing skeletons. It had sounded to her like the tank could be the location.

But the newspaper spotted discrepancies in Corless' maps, and found records showing that the actual septic tank remained in use until the late 1930s, which meant it could not have been used as a burial spot. Other analysts pointed out that the decommissioned septic tank would be too small to hold many bodies. And the two men who had reported seeing skeletons in 1975 said, on reflection, that they doubted more than 20 were inside the concreted hole.

Ireland last week announced it would open a judge-led investigation into the care of children in Tuam and nine other defunct facilities, and the handling of their remains. Whether the fact-finding effort will include excavations at any of the former homes or DNA analysis of remains has yet to be decided.

In an editorial, the Irish Times said Ireland was suffering "self-induced amnesia" given that historians already had documented "staggeringly high mortality rates in some mother and child homes." It noted that Tuam's mortality rate appeared lower than others, and predicted the upcoming inquiry into the entire system would be painful.

"Learning from the past can be a disturbing process," it said. "It involves an examination of failures and the acceptance of hurtful conclusions. It means making amends for past societal wrongs. It should establish why certain things happened, rather than heap blame on those who implemented policy. An examination of current discriminatory practices would also help. As a society, we have an uncomfortable road to travel."

http://news.msn.com/world/media-exaggerated-horror-tale-at-irish-orphanage