The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.
In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.
Religion has historically provided a safe haven to the sick and twisted among society, where they’re allowed to act with impunity due to their perceived status.
That’s not directly due to the religion; but rather due to the societal pedestal being devout seems to put people on; “a holy person could never do that to a child” etc…
The reality is, other areas that benefit from this sort of status too find themselves riddled with bad actors… Just look through charity organisations and I can guarantee you’ll be combing over a sea of sociopaths buying themselves good credit with public opinion rather than people looking to make a difference because they want to (not to say these people don’t exist; they just don’t end up running the show normally)
To the “religion is what makes us civil” crowd, fuck off all the way to whatever hell you believe in or just the sun.
Disclaimer: This is not a call for violence.
Every time I run into a pro lifer, I tell them about what happened in Ireland.
Most of them ignore me, some say it’s worth it.
My dad recent got a decent payout for being the internationally trafficked childhood victim of one of these unwed mother homes…
Not worth his lifetime of trauma, nor the issues that came with being sold at age 4 to a “keeping up appearances” family that sent him away to boarding school on top of everything…
But it’s something… he’s mid 70s, so you know, totally enough time to use the money.
I’m old enough to remember everyone getting all bent out of shape by Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of the Pope.
She was a couple of years early, but right.
But she paid a huge price for being too early :(
Didn’t she go full Islam afterwards though? Like… Bruh.
Can you blame her?
Can you blame her for recognizing and turning her back on a harmful patriarchal religion that victimizes women and children and turning to… Islam? Yeah, I can.
I don’t. Her talent doesn’t make her anything special outside of that talent. A person can do the wrong thing for the right reasons.
Also, it happened during a time when Muslims were facing torment from the outside world because of 9/11. She wasn’t the only artist to convert to Islam during that time, but most of the ones I remember reading about at least had some potential connection to the religion through their ancestry.
Some people cannot fathom a world without religion, even when they see the destruction in what they’re familiar with. If you spend your heart fighting one enemy, it’s a lot easier to miss the crimes of the enemy next door, especially if that enemy is a perceived underdog.
Edit:
2018 is when she converted apparently, but she still would have seen and felt the post 9/11 world. I don’t know much of anything so disregard everything I said if you want to or tell me why I’m an idiot if I deserve it.
No. Show your work.I have been educated today.
Fuckin’ weird move, Sinead.
I mean, it was 26 years after the pope thing but she did convert to Islam. Even changed her name.
HUH. Okay, fair enough.
How do they determine age with a DNA test? Wouldn’t say look at the remains from the death baby’s? I have questions.
DNA -> find mother -> ask when birth or abortion occurred. Otherwise, examination and guesswork. If you look at a skull, you can approximately tell the age at death.
dna gives you parent gives you when they were there? assuming they kept records of who lived there.
But that would mean they collected maternal samples as well. And they didn’t say that. In the 60s that is highly unlikely.
databases just kind of exist
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home .
The mothers were required to stay inside the home for one year, doing unpaid work for the nuns, as reimbursement for some of the services rendered. They were separated from their children, who remained separately in the home, raised by nuns, until they could be adopted – often without consent.
Some women who had had two confinements were sent directly to nearby Magdalene laundries after giving birth, as punishment for their perceived “recidivism”. According to Professor Maria Luddy, "Such a stance, though not intended to be penal, allowed for the development of an attitude that accepted detention as a means of protecting society from these reoffending women.
Confinements. Punishment. Detention. Reoffending women.
Damn those fucking monsters. Worse of all I bet the lived with no consequences…
Religion is fucked up.
Don’t trust any religious people.
They’re all sick in the head.
Religion is a social cancer. Sometimes it’s benign and the host reabsorbs it. Other times it’s spreads and kills living tissue
If you’re not religious why are you upset that some people didn’t get a proper burial?
There were death certificates so it’s unlikely there’s foul play, unless there’s some details this poorly written article is missing. It’s just they didn’t observe proper religious ceremony on the disposal of the deceased.
So your argument is that religious people are bad because some religious people don’t always follow religious ceremonies? Like if you don’t think religion is good, why would you be upset over improper disposal of the deceased?
These homes existed purely to punish unwed mothers, because Catholicism. Don’t even try to minimise the deep national trauma still felt today because it might show a weirdo cult in a bad light.
You realise you don’t need to be religious to believe that people deserve a proper burial right? There doesn’t need to be some man in the sky watching everyone 24/7 for people to be buried with dignity
Yeah, burial is mostly just to make sure critters don’t drag your rotting bits out into the open and your putrid parts don’t contaminate the water supply.
Yeah, I’m sure there was no foul play in an abusive institution dealing with most vunerable members of society.
Why do people simp for organized religion so hard?
Wait what? 20 deaths a year and because there is a death certificate there is no fouls play?
I dont agree with the original commenter, but come on.
This is a thread about babies.
Do you really think people need a religion to see that throwing their dead bodies in a septic tank is an incredibly disrespectful and dehumanizing act?
I dont need to wish for a christian burial to understand the implications of christian nuns doing this.
Proper disposal of the deceased isn’t limited to religious people.
I don’t give a fuck about proper burials.
Burying bodies in cemeteries is an incredibly selfish thing. All cemeteries and golf courses should be converted into income based housing.
I only said religious people are fucked in the head. Full stop.
All religious people are mentally unwell and a danger to society.
I hope that cleared it up!
Honestly I think that thinking that having a place for people to grieve their loved ones is a selfish thing is realy fucked in the head.
Sure, plant and dedicate a tree. Or a bench by a lake. Or keep an urn on your mantle. Or thousands of other ways. But, sorry you can’t live here because we need this space exclusively to grieve?
Well, the tree thing is reality for those that chose forest burials (at least thats a thing in my country).
I think we would run out of benches by lakes rather quick. Also, that is a thing already.
Keeping an Urn is not legal everywhere. I agree the it should be.
The thing is, that humans want to do something with he their loves ones remains. We are incredibly social creates, to the point where our bonds last beyond death. We have buried our dead for thousands and thousands of years. Neanderthals buried their dead. It’s just an extremely human way to process grieve, complete independent of any religion.
So having a dedicated space to do so makes total sense. Of course that takes up room. But I’d argue that having a park like, walkable and often very beautiful place in your neighborhood is a net win for everybody. Unless you think that we should also get rid of parks and other recreational areas.
And, you have the possibility to visit a dedicated place of grievance close by, which is sensible especially for elderly people.
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There’s only two religions in the planet that do this kind of fucked up shit with any frequency, and it’s only because they’re the norm in both of those regions. Don’t make yourself sound like a literal Reddit atheist. You’re here exactly because Reddit sucks. Don’t bring it back.
Many people are religious without doing this kind of shit.
Only two? Hahahahahaha
Show me examples of Buddhists, Native Americans, or Paganists doing this kind of stuff. The literal reason Islamism and Christianity are particularly bad is because they’re mass-adopted and politicians take advantage of that.
Just remove all religion from politics and there won’t be any problems. Human rights dictate freedom of religion AND FROM religion, not just the later.
Buddhists - Rohynga Genocide
Native Americans - Aztec human sacrifice, up to 20,000 per year.
Paganists - not a thing. Paganism is a description, not a religion. But there are plenty of neo-Nazi neo-pagan groups who love burning churches.
Have you heard of the Rohingya genocide? Buddhists absolutely do fucked up shit.
I would agree with you that not all religion is bad. But singling out Christianity and Islam as the exclusively bad ones is absurd. All religions have some really important things to teach us philosophically, but at the same time, pretty much every religion has been used to justify some pretty bad atrocities.
Holy shit. A nuanced take on religion on lemmy not downvoted into oblivion
All religions are poison. Picking which is worse between lead poisoning or arsenic?
That’s all you bud.
I’ll be poison free.
So like I used to be anti-religion. But when I studied the history of religious thought, it seemed like every criticism I had of religion I was able to find a religious tradition which explicitly accounted for that criticism, and it made me realize a lot of the essential beliefs that I had about religion in general were simply untrue. Like there are religious traditions that literally deny institutionalization (so you can’t even associate religion in general with organized religion), there are literally religions that explicitly reject the existence of any kind of deity (so you can’t even identify religion with a belief in some kind of a god). In general, it seemed like the only thing that literally all religions had in common was that they represented a set of metaphysical beliefs that an individual has attached themself to for whatever reason. And I realized that it’s kind of impossible to never make any metaphysical assumptions about the world we live in. And I started to ask myself questions like “is it even possible to reject the entire category of religious thought in a meaningful way while still retaining the ability to reason about the world?” And “is there actually a good reason why I don’t want to think of my own humanist ideas about the world as religious in nature, or does it just make me feel kind of funny because I had already prejudiced myself so heavily against the concept of religious thought?”
This is not a position born out of logic and reason, but out of hate. I hope you get better at some point, you obviously have suffered a lot to become filled with rage this much.
If you think every religious person is evil then I’m sorry, but your religious trauma is not an excuse. Go back to reddit.
Tell me you know nothing about buddhism without telling me you know nothing about buddhism. While we’re at it, opinions on hinduism?
Smaller religions have been sacrificing children since the stone age.
I’m not saying its all bad, but singling out two religions in your general area and blaming the problem on them being “political” as if religion isn’t based on dictating social norms is ridiculous.
I agree with the freedom to believe, though. Doesnt mean that there arent inherent dangers to this stuff. You’re in a thread about murdered babies, please keep that in mind.
Christians, Muslims and Jews. Disproven. Now go away, troll (or misinformed idiot)
Sorry that your religious trauma causes you to be bigoted, I guess. You’re no better than Israelis.
How could these nuns think they would be admitted to heaven?
One of the selling features of Christianity is that you just need to ask Jesus forgiveness and it will be granted.
Honestly if hell could be livestreamed I’d love to have a kick out of watching a 24 hour stream of them burning on it.
Catholic Islam is a radical sect
Sorry *Christianity
You were right… same God, different prophet
Because they didn’t allow abortion. That’s how
Sounds like they were all about the 4-5-6-7-8-9th trimester abortions.
“The remains ranged from 35 weeks gestation to 3 years old.” So not abortions but stillbirths and dead children. Conditions were appalling, rampant disease etc.
If you wait till it’s born, it’s not abortion anymore but sending those poor little angels directly to God who’s the only one who will ever be able to properly care for them or whatever kind of bullshit they used to justify what they did…
I’m guessing that God probably knows the infant mortality rates throughout history.
Catholics… If hell exists it’ll be full of 'em.
Naww… hell is gonna be cool. The real hell will be “their heaven”
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What the fuck
But abortion is immoral, right?
nope, not if you wait for 9 months before exercising that option, apparently.
Ummm this article is either old or this has happened multiple times now and I am really not going to investigate further myself because I want to go to bed unsad tonight.
It appears that this is a new article with updated details on a news story that’s been evolving for a decade. So, it’s the same one you’ve heard about before, just with a bit of new information.
Yeah, it’s an old story. What’s new is they’ve started excavating it.
The article is new because the excavation just started, the home operated between 1920 and 1961. But it has happened in multiple locations in the UK. So, all of the above.
Ireland is not in the UK.
June 17, 2025… seems pretty new
June 17, 2025 2:01pm PDT
Based
Flush alligators not children.
Maybe don’t flush alligators either.
