London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Aug 22, 2025

The deaths of 9,000 infants in Irish homes for unwed mothers proves how little value women had in the eyes of the Catholic Church

The deaths of 9,000 infants in Irish homes for unwed mothers proves how little value women had in the eyes of the Catholic Church

An investigation into mother-and-child institutions in Ireland calls for both a state apology and redress. But that’s too little too late for women, who, for centuries, have been treated as second-class citizens by the Church.

On Monday in Rome, Pope Francis changed medieval canon law to allow women to undertake more duties during Mass – read scripture and serve on the altar as eucharistic ministers among them – but confirmed they cannot be priests.

On Tuesday, a damning report into how the Church and the authorities in the Republic of Ireland colluded to keep unwed mothers and their children as virtual slaves was released by the government in Dublin.

Rome and Dublin might be over 1,500km apart as the crow flies, but, for women, the two events are inextricably connected and show their lot has changed little in 1,500 years. While Pope Francis is working on reforming the 2,000-year-old institution he leads to bring it into the 20th century, the rest of us have moved on and live in the 21st, where women rightly enjoy equal access and rights.

For the third time in a little over two decades, the Irish government is issuing an apology to the innocent victims of suffering wilfully perpetrated by officials in the Church, and issuing compensation to those who were physically, sexually and psychologically abused while in the care of Church and State.

In May 1999, then Taoiseach – or Prime Minister – Bertie Ahern issued a state apology to the victims of abuse in religious-run institutions that were supposed to care for truants, troubled children and those convicted of minor criminal misdemeanours. The official estimate for compensation at that time was set at €500 million ($608 million). The actual payout figure was more than double that – and it was paid only to those victims who still lived in Ireland.

In 2013, it was the turn of Taoiseach Enda Kenny to apologise to the 10,000 victims of abuse at the so-called Magdalene Laundries. Over 74 years, unmarried mothers and their children were forced to work in the notorious laundries – and almost 1,000 were found to have been buried in the grounds of the institutions. Some spent most of their lives working in slave-like conditions.

And now, in 2020, it’s the turn of Taoiseach Michéal Martin to offer an apology to women for their treatment at the hands of the Catholic Church.

Details of the official report into the mother-and-baby homes were leaked on Sunday to a Dublin newspaper. Martin will offer a ‘mea culpa’ to the women and children who suffered horrific abuse in a series of such institutions across Ireland, where there were few records of how children died, and for the estimated 9,000 who did, where they were buried.

This latest dark chapter came to light only by the efforts of an amateur historian from Tuam in western Ireland, who was haunted by the memories of gaunt and sickly orphans dressed in rags who lived in a local institution. She found just two death certificates, but knew many more had died. Thanks to the conscience and good works of Catherine Corless, the remains of 802 children, from newborns to three-year-olds, were found in a disused septic tank. They were discarded there between 1925 and 1961, shedding a light on a nationwide system of religious abuse.

The bodies of those thousands of children were buried in unmarked graves or worse, and mothers and their children forced into back-breaking work for little or no money – and all with the approval of the officials who were aware of the abuses being carried out by the religious orders running the homes. Those women had committed no crime, their only sin being to have fallen pregnant out of wedlock.

Corless and others have documented how some children were taken from their mothers shortly after birth to be trafficked to couples in the US who were childless and wanted a family. Others were told their mothers were dead.

And the state knew just how the Church was treating women. In 1939, the inspector for ‘boarded-out’ children (that is, those fostered out to families) wrote: "The chance of survival of an illegitimate infant born in the slums and placed with a foster mother in the slums a few days after birth, is greater [even] than that of an infant born in one of our special homes for unmarried mothers."

The last of the 18 homes that are the focus of this damning report only closed in 1998. That was just three years after Irish voters narrowly agreed to change the state’s constitution to allow for divorce. By then, voters had already rejected two separate referendums on abortion – and that ban was only overturned in a plebiscite in May 2018.

How women were treated by the Catholic Church in Ireland – with the tacit collusion of the state – serves as a painful reminder that, while, since Monday, they may be allowed to serve on the church altar by decree of Pope Francis, they remain as outsiders.

In August 2018, the Pope had an opportunity to make real amends to the women of Ireland, to the victims who suffered at the hands of his Church, and the little dead children whose mortal remains were tossed into a septic tank as their final resting place, by visiting the site of the former home the nefarious deeds of which were uncovered by Corless.

His official itinerary for a papal visit to Ireland had him 38km away in Knock, saying Mass at a place where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in an apparition to a group of local people in 1879. But that 38km distance was evidently just too far for the pontiff to travel to utter even a silent prayer.

"Those babies … were just discarded," Corless noted just before the publication of the official report. "They were not seen as human beings at all. They were just seen as things to be discarded, not treated with any dignity or respect, and it’s time to turn the tables to give healing back to all the survivors."

At the very least, the report will show women exactly how the Church valued them back then – and, in the light of this week’s events, how little it values them now.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Bunkers, Billions and Apocalypse: The Secret Compounds of Zuckerberg and the Tech Giants
Ukraine Declares De Facto War on Hungary and Slovakia with Terror Drone Strikes on Their Gas Lifeline
Animated K-pop Musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Becomes Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Animated Film
New York Appeals Court Voids Nearly $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump While Upholding Fraud Liability
Elon Musk tweeted, “Europe is dying”
Far-Right Activist Convicted of Incitement Changes Gender and Demands: "Send Me to a Women’s Prison" | The Storm in Germany
Hungary Criticizes Ukraine: "Violating Our Sovereignty"
Will this be the first country to return to negative interest rates?
Child-free hotels spark controversy
North Korea is where this 95-year-old wants to die. South Korea won’t let him go. Is this our ally or a human rights enemy?
Hong Kong Launches Regulatory Regime and Trials for HKD-Backed Stablecoins
China rehearses September 3 Victory Day parade as imagery points to ‘loyal wingman’ FH-97 family presence
Trump Called Viktor Orbán: "Why Are You Using the Veto"
Horror in the Skies: Plane Engine Exploded, Passengers Sent Farewell Messages
MSNBC Rebrands as MS NOW Amid Comcast’s Cable Spin-Off
AI in Policing: Draft One Helps Speed Up Reports but Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns
Shame in Norway: Crown Princess’s Son Accused of Four Rapes
Apple Begins Simultaneous iPhone 17 Production in India and China
A Robot to Give Birth: The Chinese Announcement That Shakes the World
Finnish MP Dies by Suicide in Parliament Building
Outrage in the Tennis World After Jannik Sinner’s Withdrawal Storm
William and Kate Are Moving House – and the New Neighbors Were Evicted
Class Action Lawsuit Against Volkswagen: Steering Wheel Switches Cause Accidents
Taylor Swift on the Way to the Super Bowl? All the Clues Stirring Up Fans
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Apple Expands Social Media Presence in China With RedNote Account Ahead of iPhone 17 Launch
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Cambridge Dictionary Adds 'Skibidi,' 'Delulu,' and 'Tradwife' Amid Surge of Online Slang
Bill Barr Testifies No Evidence Implicated Trump in Epstein Case; DOJ Set to Release Records
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
The CEO Who Replaced 80% of Employees for the AI Revolution: "I Would Do It Again"
Emails Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Character.ai Bets on Future of AI Companionship
China Ramps Up Tax Crackdown on Overseas Investments
Japanese Office Furniture Maker Expands into Bomb Shelter Market
Intel Shares Surge on Possible U.S. Government Investment
Hurricane Erin Threatens U.S. East Coast with Dangerous Surf
EU Blocks Trade Statement Over Digital Rule Dispute
EU Sends Record Aid as Spain Battles Wildfires
JPMorgan Plans New Canary Wharf Tower
Zelenskyy and his allies say they will press Trump on security guarantees
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Escalating Clashes in Serbia as Anti-Government Protests Spread Nationwide
The Drought in Britain and the Strange Request from the Government to Delete Old Emails
Category 5 Hurricane in the Caribbean: 'Catastrophic Storm' with Winds of 255 km/h
"No, Thanks": The Mathematical Genius Who Turned Down 1.5 Billion Dollars from Zuckerberg
The surprising hero, the ugly incident, and the criticism despite victory: "Liverpool’s defense exposed in full"
Digital Humans Move Beyond Sci-Fi: From Virtual DJs to AI Customer Agents
YouTube will start using AI to guess your age. If it’s wrong, you’ll have to prove it
×