Ireland Wanted to Forget. But the Dead Don’t Always Stay Buried.
The New York Times’s Dan Barry writes about the recent discovery of hundreds of dead children in a septic system near the Tuam home in Ireland, an orphanage managed by a Catholic order in the early to mid-twentieth century. Barry writes, “Children born out of wedlock during this period were nearly four times more likely to die than ‘legitimate’ children, with those in institutions at particular risk.” Catherine Corless has made it her mission to unearth its secrets: “The future of the Tuam grounds that her questioning disturbed has yet to be revealed. The government is grappling with many complexities, including the sad fact that the remains of infants and children, the Marys and Patricks, the Bridgets and Johns, are commingled,” Barry writes.