A perfect example of the infamous
Good Story timed to coincide with the
Pope's visit to Ireland has to the hyperventilated claims on
Tuam and the
"800 bodies" of infants that were
"tossed into a pit".
The fact it only involves 796 names is neither here nor there..what's 4 or even 40 "bodies" when there is a Good Story to be had that will sweep the world and even be
regurgitated by the BBC.
The facts though are somewhat different.
The researcher who uncovered records of those 795 children who sadly died when terrible plagues & poverty swept Ireland..even in Catholic orphanages, was mortified when her research, in which she speculated that perhaps many of those bodies may be buried in what was once a sewer but became a crypt suddenly became a certainty even for "quality" publications around the world.
The inference is that perhaps many of those kids died at the hands of the evil Nuns and while most certainly the ancient history of the Church in Ireland and elsewhere contained a brutal existence, many of those Nuns were not unlike the poor ladies who gave up their children for adoption or to an orphanage...numerous young girls fleeing to the sanctity of the church for at least, some sort of safe life.
I wouldn't really know but I was married to a Catholic who was brought up in various boarding schools run by nuns and she says while there were some horrors, most were just reasonably nice women even if they were "married to God".
The notion perpetuated that they hauled the recently deceased baby out of its cot and tossed it into a pit without even a prayer seems somewhat exaggerated.
But perhaps there are 800 bodies there..or even 900 but will we ever know?. Excavations have uncovered some bones but apparently, it's horrendously painstaking work being undertaken by archeologists due to the very precarious nature of the foundations of the crypt/sewer and I bet those archeologists don't come cheap.
And now that aggrieved relatives have come forward (how do they know they are real?) when, errr they were pretty silent for the last 70 years, there is bound to be Buckets of Compo involved as the Irish government has a good history of throwing cash at similar problems in the hope it will go away. (Hedda had an Irish grandmother- there may well be a poor little infant relative who was tossed into the pit)
But now one of my favourite Movie Stars
Lian Neeson is involved so that more or less confirms all claims made are true as we all know Hollywood only ever presents the truth even when it's fiction.
# there are miles and miles to run in this story..one of the best!
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6098137...Pope-face-truth.html