UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
800 dead orphans thrown away in a septic tank by Catholic nuns in Ireland.
As this article reveals, the contempt with which these orphans were treated did not begin the minute they died. The “Home Babies” were ridiculed and ostracized throughout their typically short and miserable lives.
And, apparently, treated with criminal neglect.
A local health board inspection report from April 1944 recorded 271 children and 61 single mothers in residence, a total of 333 in a building that had a capacity for 243.
The report described the children as “emaciated,” “pot-bellied,” “fragile” with “flesh hanging loosely on limbs.” The report noted that 31 children in the “sun room and balcony” were “poor, emaciated and not thriving.” The effects of long term neglect and malnutrition were observed repeatedly.
Children died at The Home at the rate of one a fortnight for almost 40 years, one report claims. Another appears to claim that 300 children died between 1943 and 1946, which would mean two deaths a week in the isolated institution. …
It’s a lesson we have yet to learn, for this is a staggering reality.
Elsewhere, writers are pointing out the hypocrisy of pro-life groups that have remained silent on this crime. “Every sperm is sacred, but apparently not every two-year-old, in the world of the Irish Catholic Right,” notes Bock the Robber.
And here in America, the bishops continue to behave like racketeers when it comes to sex abuse. In my home town of St. Louis, our archbishop’s favorite priest has now been accused for a second time of sex abuse, and the archbishop’s response has been to smear the alleged victim’s parents with a public press release.
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