Disturbing Levels of Mortality
The revelation that nearly 800 infants died at a Roman Catholic institution in Tuam, Co Galway, over a 36-year period, has caused outrage in the Republic of Ireland and further afield. In this home established for unmarried mothers and their children, 796 infants died between 1925 and 1961. The home was run by the Sisters of Bon Secours and it is believed that around 3000 children lived there during those years.
While, admittedly, the infant mortality rate for the poorest children in Ireland at that time was much higher than it is today, it is shocking to think that well over one quarter of the children who entered the home died there. The President of the Catholic League in Ireland, Bill Donohue, played down
lurid allegations of a mass grave but did not dispute the numbers who died: “Given the conditions the kids were in when the nuns acquired them, and given the fact that people in these homes died prematurely with these so-called fallen women in these homes and orphanages, I’m not doubting that at all”.
The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference has apologised to anyone who has been hurt by “this system”: “It is disturbing that the residents of these Homes suffered disproportionately high levels of mortality and malnutrition, disease and destitution,” the statement read. “Mindful of the words of Jesus, ‘Let the little children come to Me, because it is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs,’ we apologise for hurt caused by the Church as part of this system.”
While many will discern the hollowness of such words coming from such a source, our prayer must be that the multitudes of poor souls still deluded by Rome may swiftly have their eyes open to the unchanging character of the “mystery of iniquity”. The fiendish cruelty which seems to have been so widespread in such institutions is only further proof of the true nature of the Roman Catholic Church.
AWM