Pope’s Ignorance of Magdalene Laundries Confounds Survivors

By Catherine Sanz
The Times
August 28, 2018

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pope-s-ignorance-of-magdalene-laundries-confounds-survivors-p665fc6m5

Margaret McGuckin, from Belfast, who suffered abuse at the Nazareth House children’s home, said she did not accept that the Pope did not know about the laundries

Survivors of clerical abuse have expressed disbelief over Pope Francis’ statement that he was not aware of the Magdalene laundries scandal.

Victims said that details of abuses at the Catholic-run institutions had been publicised internationally for two decades. They said that if the Pope were genuinely attempting to address the church’s failings he should have “done his homework” before his visit.

The Pope told reporters on Sunday: “I had never heard of these mothers, they call it the laundromat of women where an unwed woman is pregnant and goes into these hospitals. I don’t know what they call them, schools, run by the nuns and then they gave children to the people in adoption.”

On Saturday he had a private meeting at the papal nuncio’s…