IRELAND
Reuters
In the leafy grounds of a center for the disabled in rural central Ireland, a small tombstone hints at the building’s previous role as a “mother-and-baby home”. It reads: “In Memory of God’s Special Angels”.
No names, no dates, just an acknowledgement that buried in the garden of the Manor House in Castlepollard are children born to unwed mothers at the Church-run institutions that dotted Ireland half a century ago.
The discovery of a mass grave at a similar home, two hours drive to the west in the small town of Tuam, has prompted the Irish to ask why so many babies died, anonymously, in the care of the Catholic Church that was once a pillar of respectability.
“If something happened in Tuam, it probably happened in other mother-and-baby homes around the country,” said Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, who has seen the Church’s authority shattered by revelations of sex abuse by priests and cruelty at so-called Magdalene laundries where “fallen women” were forced to work in harsh conditions.
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