IRELAND
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
When Catherine Corless’s research suggesting that there was a mass grave at a home for unwed mothers and their children at Tuam in County Galway, Ireland, first began to be circulated, the blowback from some apologists in the Catholic institution was enormous. It took real grit and determination for her to keep investigating this story in the face of claims she was lying, that she was out to get the church, that she had exaggerated her findings and what they meant, and on and on.
As Ireland’s commissioner for children Katherine Zappone has now confirmed, Corless was right all along. She’s a hero.
Catherine Corless sums up her findings about the Tuam home and its mass grave in an interview with Tom Sykes:
The fact that the deaths were reported and that death certificates were issued for the children who were never buried – and let us not forget that prohibiting the decent burial of a human is and always has been a terrible crime in Ireland – is an indication of the incredible arrogance of the nuns. But it is also evidence that there must have been a wide circle of people in authority and the church who knew full well what was going on. Multiple children’s bodies a year were disappearing, unaccounted for, and no questions were asked.
“They were a law unto themselves,” says Corless, “They were surrounded by those eight foot high walls. Nobody – literally nobody – was allowed in; they were met at the gate and hardly any outsiders were brought in. They didn’t employ any locals as such -maybe they might bring somebody in for maintenance, for fixing the roof or a chimney–but otherwise the women who gave birth there and who were waiting to give birth, they were the ones that did all the work.” . . .
Corless believes that financial motivation was the primary motivation behind the illegal burials.
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