IRELAND
The Daily Beast
The dogged effort of a determined historian in a small Irish town uncovered one of the greatest tragedies in modern Irish history.
Tom Sykes
DUBLIN—On Friday morning, the Irish government’s minister for children made a shocking announcement.
Katherine Zappone stood in front of a hastily convened news conference in Dublin and confirmed a horrific, longstanding rumor that the bodies of several hundred babies and children had been illegally disposed of by an order of nuns in a sewage system hidden underneath a so-called ‘mother and baby’ home operated by the Bon Secours congregation of nuns – the name is French for “good help” and their motto is “Good Help to Those in Need”.
“Up to now we had rumors. Now we have confirmation that the remains are there, and that they date back to the time of the mother-and-baby home, which operated in Tuam from 1925 to 1961,” Minister Zappone said, her voice at times seeming to break with emotion.
The minister’s statement came after a specially appointed commission published the results of test excavation at the site in Tuam, Co Galway, a patch of waste ground adjacent to a housing estate which was built after ‘the Home’, as it was known locally, was demolished.
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