IRELAND
RTE News
Mary Joyce and the others have made it an annual pilgrimage for years, writes Midlands Correspondent Ciaran Mullooly.
Mary’s mission is straightforward: she comes back time and time again to the Castlepollard Mother and Baby Hospital because she is searching for her Aunt Carmel, who was just 17 years old when she came to this austere and bleak three-storey building run by the nuns in the countryside just outside Castlepollard.
Her ‘sin’ – to have become pregnant – and then moved into St Peter’s.
Mary says she is certain the baby was born here and she holds a death registration certificate to confirm the same infant died less than three weeks later at Tullamore hospital – more than 80km away.
“She died on December 13 1950 of hydrocephalus [water on the brain] and spina bifida” says Mary – who is still angry about what happened.
Every summer Mary and the rest of a small group of relatives now meet here to remember the dead and the missing.
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