Another Mass Grave of Babies Who Died Under the “Tender” Care of Nuns

Another Mass Grave of Babies, PDF format

It is like something out of the Dark Ages.  But it is unfolding right now in Ireland.

Whenever Protestants spoke or wrote in the past about how babies were discarded by nuns into unmarked graves, Rome always dismissed such allegations as nothing but Protestant “Rome-bashing”.  But even today, evidence is surfacing that it really did happen – and not a few times, but multiplied hundreds of times.

In 2009, I wrote an article entitled A Mass Grave of Babies and the Lie of “Limbo”,[1] in which I gave the details of a mass grave, in an unmarked site, of thousands of unwanted babies found at Milltown Cemetery, which is in predominantly Roman Catholic west Belfast, Northern Ireland.  The babies buried there were children of Roman Catholics who died in infancy, before they could receive the Roman Catholic rite of “baptism”, between the 1940s and 1970s.

Now, in the last few years, a second mass grave has come to light, this time in Tuam, County Galway, in the Republic of Ireland.  And it is estimated that this forgotten grave contains the remains of a staggering almost 800 babies!

The site is located at what was a home for unmarried mothers from the 1920s until the 1960s.  During this forty-year period, infant mortality was very high.  It is believed that many of the children died from malnutrition and infectious diseases.  But here’s the shocker: the home was run by the Bon Secours Roman Catholic order of nuns!

Yes, nuns – those women who fool Papists and gullible Protestants alike with their mask of “sanctity” and “other-worldliness”.  Those women who are considered, by millions, to be holy and godly, serving God.  Those women who for centuries have been engaged in such works as nursing the sick and educating children.  Surprise! – it turns out they are sinners like everyone else, and moreover, often even more heartless and cruel than others (this of course comes as no surprise to Christians who understand the horrible nature of Roman Catholicism and the kind of monsters it so often breeds behind the walls of convents and monasteries, but it comes as a huge surprise to the people of the world, so used to viewing nuns as “holy” women of God).  Yes, of course there are nuns who are kind-hearted, caring, merciful and sweet (even though they are not true Christians); but this does not negate the fact that multitudes of them have been blind servants of the priests, hard and cruel women who have made life in convents a living death for so many poor girls trapped therein.

People who had once been residents at this nun-run home said they were treated very harshly.  “Some of the children from the home would attend the local school,” said Catherine Corless, a local historian and genealogist, who was researching the home.  “They were treated differently, went home earlier, and were all shipped off to an industrial school when they were around seven years old.”[2]

How was the discovery made?

Corless, during the course of her researches into the home, discovered the death records for 796 children, ranging in age from infants to the age of 9.  But she could find no record of their burials, not even in other graveyards in the country, nor in the areas where the mothers had come from.  This led her to conclude, “We can safely assume that they’re all in that plot.”[3]

Interestingly, the site was previously known to be a graveyard, and for decades locals had suspected that it was for “unbaptized” babies (that is, babies who were not “baptized’ according to the false sacrament of “baptism” within Roman Catholicism), or for famine victims who had died at the home, and then been buried in unmarked graves.[4]  It has often been the case that local Roman Catholics know, or suspect, that something sinister may be going on in a particular home, convent or monastery run by nuns or priests, but they are too afraid to speak out.  Doubtless, in many other places around the world, such local knowledge would exist.  But getting the locals to open up about it is another matter entirely.  From childhood they are raised to believe that the priests of Rome are little gods on earth, and that the nuns are women of exceptional holiness.

The home was closed in the early 1960s.  But in the mid-1970s two boys who were playing close to the site discovered broken concrete slabs covering a hollow.  It was a disused septic tank, which had been in use before the 1920s when the building had been a workhouse, and then emptied.  When the boys broke the concrete, they discovered a hole “filled to the brim with bones”.[5] [see the Addendum at the end of this article]

This is the religion which calls itself “the one true and holy Catholic Apostolic Church”.  This is the religion which claims that it was established on Peter, by Christ Himself.  Yet this is the religion which constantly shocks the world, whenever another revelation is made of its dark deeds.

After Corless tracked down the death certificates for the almost 800 children who had died at the facility – without being able to find more than one burial record – the Irish government appointed a commission led by a judge, and called the Mother and Baby Homes Commission, to investigate.  And in March 2017 it confirmed Corless’ findings.  It announced, in the light of excavations at the site which had been going on since November 2016, that an underground structure had been found, divided into twenty chambers, and containing “significant quantities of human remains.”[6]  These underground chambers were originally used to hold sewage, but in 1937 the home was connected to a modern water supply and the chambers fell into disuse.  Disuse, that is, until they became a convenient dumping ground for almost 800 babies in the following decades!  DNA analysis confirmed that the ages of the dead ranged from 35 weeks to three years old, and that they were buried there mainly in the 1950s.

The investigators said they were trying to identify “who was responsible for the disposal of human remains in this way.”  The answer to that is staring everyone in the face: it was the nuns of the home, under the direction of their priests.  A Labour Party lawmaker, Joan Burton, called on the Roman Catholic “Church” to provide more assistance to the investigators.[7]  Typically, the “Church” of Rome was not exactly rushing to assist.  The Bon Secours order of nuns, which ran the home until it was closed, merely issued a terse statement in which it said: “The Bon Secours sisters are fully committed to the work of the Commission regarding the mother and baby home in Tuam.  On the closing of the Home in 1961 all the records for the Home were returned to Galway County Council who are the owners and occupiers of the lands of the Home.  We can therefore make no comment on today’s announcement, other than to confirm our continued cooperation with and support for the work of the Commission in seeking the truth about the home.”[8]  Terse, unemotional, and hardly contrite!  This has ever been Rome’s way: it either attempts to cover up its crimes – or to deny any responsibility.  A pledge to “co-operate” means little unless concrete co-operation immediately follows.  Corless saw through this typical response from the nuns, criticising it as “the usual maddening nonsense.  They must apologise and take responsibility for what happened here.”[9]

We agree wholeheartedly that this kind of response is, indeed, “the usual maddening nonsense.”  We also agree that they must take responsibility.  We do not believe, however, in this modern fad for “apologising”.  Everyone is doing it: the pope “apologises” for the Rwandan genocide, and “apologises” to the Waldenses for Rome’s massacres of them;[10] politicians “apologise” for this, that and the next thing; etc.  It is all a farce.  It is simply not enough to say, “We apologise”, and expect that to be the end of the matter.  If the nuns called a press conference and said, “We apologise that almost 800 children were discarded in unmarked graves by us” – does this belated “apology” remove the sin of what was done?  A feeble “we’re sorry” is not true repentance!  Besides, one can only apologise for what one has done personally – not for what was done in the past by others!

No, an “apology” is a mockery, a farce, a sop designed to pacify people.

And what was the response of the archbishop of Tuam?  Michael Neary is his name, and he said that he was “horrified and saddened to hear” of the commission’s revelations.  Well, of course this is what he would say, isn’t it?  But what, really, does this expression of “shock” amount to?  Nothing.  Why is it that these people are always so “horrified and saddened” only when they cannot cover up the crimes of their “Church” anymore?

He went on: “This points to a time of great suffering and pain for the little ones and their mothers.  I can only begin to imagine the huge emotional wrench which the mothers suffered in giving up their babies for adoption or by witnessing their death.  Some of these young vulnerable women may already have experienced rejection by their families.  The pain and brokenness which they endured is beyond our capacity to understand.  It is, then, simply too difficult to comprehend their helplessness and suffering as they watched their beloved child die.”[11]  Note what he actually said in this speech: nothing but the same thing over and over.  In summary this is what it amounted to: no one can imagine what those women and their children went through.  That’s it.  This was the response of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Tuam.  No outrage and disgust that nuns committed these atrocities!  He knows – of course he does – that whatever those nuns did on that property to those children and/or their bodies, it would, at the very least, have been done with the knowledge of a number of priests, perhaps many priests, in the area; and also, in all likelihood, with the knowledge of at least some of the archbishops at the time: his predecessors.  Nuns, priests and archbishops of his religion: they knew.  But he would not mention these things.  Of course not.  Keep the response general.  Keep it absolutely non-committal.  Keep it overflowing with “nice” sentences about how painful it must have been for the mothers and their babies.  And hopefully the faithful in Ireland (and the world) would not notice what he did not say, and focus solely on what he did.

Children who died at Roman Catholic facilities such as this one were, in fact, often buried in unmarked graves.  “That was a common, but ill-documented practice at such Catholic-run facilities amid high child mortality rates in early 20th century Ireland.”[12]

There were various other Mother and Baby homes.  There was St Patrick’s Home in Dublin, and three institutions run by the order of nuns called the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary: Bessborough in County Cork, Sean Ross Abbey in County Tipperary, and Castlepollard in County Westmeath.  Each of these homes had high mortality rates, and each one of them had mother and baby burial sites.

According to Dr James Smith of the Justice for Magdalenes Group, the announcement by the government’s commission was just the beginning.  He said, “The Justice for Magdalenes research group and its partner group Adoption Rights Alliance have documented that there were roughly 180 institutions associated with the care and provision of services to unmarried mothers and their children, so the story is much wider than the Commission’s current investigations.”  He said the government should also investigate the other institutions named above.  “Anomalies between the recordings of deaths and the burial of children and mothers is now a defining characteristic of these institutions, as it is of the Magdalene Laundries,” he said.  “We have to pursue that.”[13]

But will thorough investigations be carried out?  There is some doubt – and with good reason.  Smith said, “Why the site in Tuam is not being cordoned off by the Irish police today and investigated as a site where an atrocity took place, that’s a fair question.  Many people are asking that question.”  And Catherine Corless asked why no investigation took place way back in the 1970s when local schoolboys found human remains, including human skulls, at the Tuam site.[14]

The answer to Corless’ question is simple.  Back then, Ireland was an intensely Roman Catholic country; one of the most Roman Catholic countries in the world, fanatically devoted to the pope and to the “Church” of Rome.  At that time, the police, the local councils, and almost everyone in any position of authority was a Roman Catholic.  Obviously, when those boys found the human remains at the site, any investigation at the time would have done more than just severely embarrass the Roman Catholic “Church” in Ireland; it would have done massive damage to it.  The public outcry, indeed outrage, would have been huge, not only in Ireland but around the world.  Rome could not afford such negative publicity, nor any investigations into her dark deeds.  It would have been an easy thing, in the Ireland of those days, for the priests to see to it, through their absolute control of the town councils, the police, etc., that the entire incident just “went away”.  Nothing came of any investigation, because no proper investigation was made.

But what about today?  Today Ireland is a very different country from what it was back then.  Its people cannot be described as being almost 100% devoutly Roman Catholic today.  There has been a massive falling away from the Roman Catholic faith in recent years, especially in light of the terrible priestly sex abuse scandals.  I have written about this in the past.[15]  And yet even so, there is every indication of a deliberate attempt at playing down this discovery of the remains of almost 800 babies:

Why, even after the commission released its findings, did the Irish police not immediately cordon off the site?  That is more than odd, or an oversight – it is downright suspicious.

Why was the entire terrible discovery not being treated as the atrocity it really was?  This was a truly horrendous story: the remains of not one or two, but almost 800 babies discovered!

Why, indeed, was the news of the commission’s findings released on a Friday – the day traditionally favoured by governments for dropping controversial stories on newsrooms preparing for the weekend break?

Why was such a huge story also released on the very day when the election results in Northern Ireland were announced?[16]  Clearly the intention was to prevent the story getting a lot of press.  But as it turned out, it got plenty anyway, thanks to social media, which turned it into an international story virtually overnight.

It is evident that, despite the massive rejection of the Romish “Church” by large numbers of Irish people, and despite the loss of the kind of power which the priests once exerted over all aspects of Irish life, including its politics, the priests of Rome do still exert a significant influence over the politics of Ireland!  True, it is nothing like what it once was; but it is still there, it is still felt, and they will attempt to bury this revelation as deep as they can.

It remains to be seen if they will succeed.

To my Christian brothers and sisters I say, in conclusion: pray for the Roman Catholic women and girls who, through blind zeal or to please parents, or for any other reason, join a convent and become nuns!  In doing so, they give themselves in utter devotion to this evil religious system which calls itself “the Holy Catholic Church”, but which God’s prophetic Word calls by another name entirely: “the Great Whore”, “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the earth” (Rev. 17:1,5).  Rome’s nuns are not holy women of God – they are sinful women, just as all women (and men) are, and they enter into those convents with the same sinful natures they had before they went in.  And within those convent grounds and behind those walls, for many centuries, all kinds of dark deeds have been committed.  It is no different today – as these underground chambers containing dead babies’ remains testify.  Oh, it is true enough that today, in this age of ecumenism, one seldom sees nuns in those black habits they used to wear.  Many of them are dressed in modern clothing and work in schools, hospitals, and other places, openly and publicly.  But the heart remains the same, and only the Lord Jesus Christ can change the heart.  Pray for the nuns, as well as the priests, of Rome, that the Lord in mercy may yet draw many out of that iniquitous religious system which holds them in bondage.

April 2017

ADDENDUM

February 2020

It was reported in 2019 that in its interim report, the Commission of Investigation of the Mother and Baby Homes stated that the “human remains found by the commission are not in a sewage tank.” There are those who will make much of this, attempting to discredit or play down the entire gruesome find as nothing more than media sensationalism, based on the fact that the reported sewage tank was a false report.  However, that the remains may not have been in a sewage tank does not alter the evil of what was done.  The commission made it very clear that these chambers were not a recognised burial ground or purpose-built burial chamber, and that they “did not provide for the dignified interment of human remains.” It also affirmed that “the Sisters of Bon Secours who ran the Tuam Home were unable to provide any information about the burials there.”  “The commission is surprised by lack of knowledge about the burials on the part of Galway County Council and the Sisters of the Bon Secours,” it said.  And in relation to some other homes, the commission also expressed surprise that while there were records of the deaths, some of the religious congregations (nuns’ communities) involved had no information on where children who died in the homes were buried. (The Southern Cross, May 1 to 7, 2019)

Shaun Willcock is a minister, author and researcher.  He runs Bible Based Ministries.  For other articles (which may be downloaded and printed), as well as details about his books, audio messages, pamphlets, etc., please visit the Bible Based Ministries website; or write to the address below.  If you would like to be on Bible Based Ministries’ email list, to receive all future articles, please send your details.

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 ENDNOTES:

[1]. A Mass Grave of Babies and the Lie of “Limbo”, by Shaun Willcock.  Bible Based Ministries, 2009.  Available on our website: www.biblebasedministries.co.uk

[2]. The Journal, 27 May 2014, article: “‘It’s time to do something’ – the forgotten mass grave of 800 babies in Galway.”  www.thejournal.ie.

[3]. The Journal, 27 May 2014.

[4]. The Journal, 27 May 2014; and ABC News, March 7, 2017, article: “Experts find mass grave at ex-Catholic orphanage in Ireland.”  http://abcnews.go.com.

[5]. The Journal, 27 May 2014.

[6]. ABC News, March 7, 2017.

[7]. ABC News, March 7, 2017.

[8]. Irish Central, March 4, 2017, article: “Tuam mass infant grave is confirmed, now what are we going to do about it?”  www.irishcentral.com.

[9]. ABC News, March 7, 2017.

[10]. See Pope’s Phony “Apology”; Waldensian Leaders’ Real Betrayal, by Shaun Willcock.  Bible Based Ministries, 2015.  Available from our website: www.biblebasedministries.co.uk.

[11]. The Southern Cross, March 15 to 21, 2017, article: “Bishop ‘horrified’ by treatment of babies.’”

[12]. ABC News, March 7, 2017.

[13]. Irish Central, March 4, 2017.

[14]. Irish Central, March 4, 2017.

[15]. The Massive Scale of Child Abuse by Priests in Ireland, by Shaun Willcock.  Bible Based Ministries, 2009.  Available from our website: www.biblebasedministries.co.uk.

[16]. Irish Central, March 4, 2017.

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