Fr Gerry Young claims no children were buried in sewage chambers at Tuam
Catholic priest, Father Gerry Young recently claimed no babies were buried in sewage chambers at the former Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.
Fr Young, from Greystones, County Wicklow, said:
“From the word go, I didn’t believe the story. I happened to have done a bit of study on how the church buried people. As soon as I heard this story about all these little bodies wrapped up on shelves, I thought, ‘Catacombs.’ We’ve always kept the dead with us.”
However…
From The Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation fifth interim report
“This (above) is what the archaeologists found when they first excavated the Tuam Home babies sewage site.
Two inlet sewage pipes which facilitated the flow of sewage into the chambers where the babies remains were discovered which caused some little remains to be forced against the wall of the chambers and, to date, one little digit was found compacted in the wall.
“I do not mean to disturb anyone, but I am only quoting from the Commission of Inquiry’s 5th Interim Report on the Tuam site, and I add (for the non-believers) that neither Catacombs or an Ossuary would need sewage inlet pipes!‘
Clockwise from back left: President and Provost of Trinity College Dublin Patrick Prendergast; former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, physicist Michal Lipson, historian Catherine Corless and poet Thomas Kinsella
This afternoon.
At Trinity College Dublin.
Historian Catherine Corless, poet Thomas Kinsella and American physicist Michal Lipson were awarded honorary degrees.
University Times reports that Trinity’s public orator Prof Anna Chahoud said Ms Corless is a:
“Woman of extraordinary courage and compassion, perseverance and commitment to justice.”
Mr Kinsella is a:
“Poetic genius, a master of rhythm, a man who firmly believes that ‘to be fully alive is to be creatively engaged’.”
And Ms Lipson is a:
“Leading light in the world of modern-day physics.”
Historian and activist Catherine Corless at the site of the mass grave at the former Tuam Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway
Survivors and relatives of infants from the Tuam mother and babies home are planning a peaceful vigil in Co Galway to coincide with the papal Mass [on Sunday, August 26] in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
….Ms [Catherine] Corless and members of the Tuam Babies Family Group will light candles and place a special sculpture made by Flemish women in the shape of a baptismal font at the grave site of the former Bon Secours home.
From top: Catherine Corless with Ray D’Arcy yesterday;; Terry Prone, of the Communications Clinic, on the Late Late Show in October
Yesterday.
Historian Catherine Corless was interviewed on RTE Radio One’s Ray D’Arcy Show.
During the interview, Ms Corless – who discovered there are no burial records for 796 babies and toddlers who were recorded as having died at the home – said she rejected an apology made by the chair of the Communications Clinic Terry Prone on the Late Late Show in October.
Ms Prone made the apology because of an email she wrote to French journalist Saskia Weber after the Irish Daily Mail first published a story about the possibility of a mass grave at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway in 2014.
In her email, Ms Prone – who was taking media queries on behalf of the Bon Secours nuns – told Ms Weber:
“If you come here, you’ll find no mass grave, no evidence that children were ever so buried, and a local police force casting their eyes to heaven and saying “Yeah, a few bones were found – but this was an area where Famine victims were buried. So?”
Ms Prone also told Ms Weber:
“If you’d like me to point you at a few reputable historians who might be good, I’ll certainly do that.”
Ms Corless’s interview on the Ray D’Arcy Show followed Minister for Children Katherine Zappone, on December 12, publishing a report from the Expert Technical Group which has been investigating the former Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.
In that report, the group outlined five options for the site of the former Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.
Readers should note the group’s full 232-page report also contains the line:
“The potential to identify individuals interred in Tuam is one that poses many challenges as has been identified in this report. It is an issue that has the potential to cause upset and potential damage to relations between the public, the Church and the Government.”
Ms Corless spoke about this line during her interview with Mr D’Arcy.
She also called for the number of skulls to be counted at the Tuam site to see if there are 796 skulls.
She said if there are fewer than 796, this may indicate that death certs were falsified to allow for illegal adoptions to take place – with children most likely sent to America.
From the interview…
Ray D’Arcy: “When you were in the last time with us, I think it was February 2015, I read to you the letter that Terry Prone had written on behalf of the Bon Secours nuns to a French documentary…”
Catherine Corless: “That’s right, that’s right.”
D’Arcy: “And it sort of poo-pooed the whole thing.
Corless: “Terry Prone did, she just really, she just made a mock of all the survivors and everything that I had brought out into the open. And it was very, very unprofessional of her at the time, I thought. And I just couldn’t believe it. It was very hurtful, it’s all I can say, to survivors.”
D’Arcy: “She did say, on the Late Late Show, when Ryan Tubridy put…”
Corless: “Well because she was put to the…a gun was put to her head, yeah.”
D’Arcy: “She said, ‘most shockingly, I should have contacted Catherine and said I’m really sorry. I believed, based on the evidence I had, that it was famine burials. And then, without looking to camera, but I think she was addressing you, ‘you were right and you were right to fight it through’. Has she rang you since?”
Corless: “Absolutely not, Ray. No I don’t take that as an apology at all because it was just a very curt, kind of her hands in the air again. It was almost the same, ‘so, I was wrong’. That’s the way I took it.”
D’Arcy: “Was that before or after you were on the Late Late?”
Corless: “It was after, oh it was yeah.”
D’Arcy: “Would you like her to ring you?”
Corless: “Absolutely, absolutely, just to see how she really feels about it: are they taking this seriously at all? Does she realise the impact it has on survivors, so many survivors. I think that’s the one thing Ray. Nobody’s taken, still, to this day, taken much notice of them, or listened to them. They don’t know the hurt they’re going through. And it’s impacting on their own families. And they don’t realise there’s so many of them.”
Later
D’Arcy: “So that report from the Expert Technical Group. In it they say, because there was a lot more to it than just the five proposals as to how to treat the site. In it they say it’s ‘an issue that has the potential to cause upset and potential damage to relations between the public, the Church and the Government’.”
Corless: “That’s right, Ray. I would question, I would question the people who wrote that, what is that about? Are they telling us we can’t be going? We can’t be upsetting the Church again? Or the State? Or the Government? I would like a, I would like an explanation of that.”
D’Arcy: “I’ll have to read it again for them again, Catherine.”
Corless: “Do please.”
D’Arcy: “‘It’s anan issue that has the potential to cause upset and potential damage to relations between the public, the Church and the Government’. Now they’re not saying ‘don’t do it because..’, they’re just pointing out…”
Corless: “I know…that’s what I mean. When you read the five suggestions again. The words they’re using. ‘Disruptive’ and they’re using words that they shouldn’t use. They’re more or less, I have said, it’s bordering on propaganda, the way that, those five issues are pointed out.”
D’Arcy: “Because they’re sort of leading…”
Corless: “Leading, leading the witness, you could say. Absolutely. And of course the money is there upfront and the first column of all the suggestions and maybe €3m-€5m sounds terrible to people and I know what Galway County Council will be saying, ‘it’s taxpayers’ money, this, that and the other’, ‘we don’t need this’, ‘there’s hospitals…’, they’ll bring in all this…”
A standing ovation for fearless and tireless researcher Catherine Corless…
Fintan Dunne writes:
“Ahead of last night’s show, I spent yesterday in Catherine’s company with Kathy McMahon of Irish First Mothers as Catherine’s husband Aidan plied us with coffee and biscuits.
Catherine’s demeanour then was just as relaxed, but with the inherent strain of it all visible on her face.
Tonight, as she turned to face the deep acclaim, her features lit up like the clear light she represents.
The people have ssued a verdict.
The existing secretive and minimalist Commission of Investigation just slid into the deep on an ebbing tide…
Social Democrat co-leader Catherine Murphy (top) called for, among other things, the removal of the Angelus from RTÉ. The comments were made during Dail statements on the Announcement by the Commission of Investigation confirming Human Remains on the Site of the former Tuam Mother and Baby home.
Ms Murphy said:
“When I first raised this issue in this House back in 2014 following my reading of Catherine Corless’s research I called at the time for the site at Tuam to immediately be declared a crime scene with Gardaí, crime scene techs, forensic anthropologists and anything else needed to establish the exact details of this atrocity.
And make no mistake, it was and is an atrocity. A mass grave of 796 tiny bodies, discarded like trash.
I listened to the Taoiseach’s speech yesterday about the culpability of the State and society. But the State- for the vast majority of time since it’s foundation the State itself was Fine Gael and or Fianna Fáil.
They were the ones who presided over debates in the chamber which referred to children born outside marriage in the most disparaging and disgusting terms and who wilfully handed over their responsibility for these women and children to a Church and they knew to be merciless at best.
So when we talk about the culpability of the State and Society, know that it was not Joe & Josephine Soap who condemned these women to a life of shame and the murder or export of their children, it was the Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael led State and their complete abdication of responsibility while being fully aware of the life they were consigning those women and children to.
The attitudes which prevailed were perpetuated by every arm of the state – the guards, the medical profession and the political system thus allowing the church to run free with their campaign of terror and castigating women for some perceived sin.
How utterly and tragically ironic that those same nuns who labelled those women as immoral, saw nothing immoral about neglecting a child to the point of death then disposing of their body in a septic tank.
And this is not the dark ages we’re talking about. The legacy of these acts are current or just one generation removed. The relatives of these women and children are still alive.
In 1995 when children playing on the site discovered skulls, it was not the police who were called for, it was a priest. He was called to bless the site then everybody went about their business as usual. The State once again turned a blind eye.
The horrors of the mother and baby homes cannot be properly put into words. The rumours of clinical drug trials have not been properly addressed and there was enough evidence of such trials in Tuam for the then Minister Kathleen Lynch to call for the Terms of Reference to include vaccine trials as part of the inquiry.
That didn’t happen and instead the terms referred to the ‘care arrangements including institutional practice with regard to health, safety, welfare and interests of mothers and children.’ It is not clear if possible vaccine trials were included.
A man from the area spoke to me recently of playing on the site and discovering hundreds of used vials buried in the grounds. And as we are all too painfully aware, such barbaric trials were not uncommon in other mother and baby homes.
So while there is now a collective wringing of hands – 2 years after it was first suggested publicly that there may be a mass grave in Tuam – the fact remains that the horrors of Tuam and other mother and baby homes existed because the State permitted the Church to control some of our most fundamental institutions and the sad fact is that not much has changed today.
We have got to take the Church from our schools, from our hospitals and medical care and from our politics. It is unacceptable that children are regularly discriminated against in our education system based on religion,
it is unacceptable that religious orders can hold any influence over medical institutions and the healthcare provided particularly to women; and it is unacceptable that the Dáil opens up every day with a prayer that is not representative of all elected members or citizens; and it is unacceptable that our national broadcaster, funded by the State, subjects citizens of all faiths and none to the angelus bells twice daily.”
These are relics of a bygone era and if Tuam has shown us anything it is this – the State must take responsibility for its citizens and the Church has no legitimacy in the healthcare or education of those citizens.”
Without the extraordinary persistence of Catherine Corless the fate of the Tuam Babies may never have come to light. She’ll be joining Ryan Tubridy to talk about why she was so determined to get to the truth and persevered despite coming under intense pressure from people who doubted the veracity of her claims. She will also be joined in studio by survivors of the Mother and Baby homes…
