Tuam babies ‘painful’ for Pope

TAKING A STAND Protesters holding aloft names of some of the victims of the Tuam babies scandal at a protest vigil in Tuam, held to coincide with the Papal Mass in the Phoenix Park in Dublin. Pic: Paul Mealey

Áine Ryan

THE Pope referred to his pain at hearing about details of what happened at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home when he spoke to journalists aboard his return flight to Rome on Sunday night.
Responding to questions regarding Minister for Children, Katherine Zappone’s brief interaction with him  on the steps of Áras an UachtarΡin on Saturday, Pope Francis said: “I had never heard of these mothers, they call it the laundromat of women where an unwed woman is pregnant and goes into these hospitals, I don’t know what they call them, schools, run by the nuns and then they gave children to the people in adoption.
“It was for me painful [to hear] but with the awareness that I have could help clear these things up,” he continued.
Minister Zappone has confirmed she told the Pope in person, and also in a letter, that she hopes the Church will make reparation to the women and babies who were residents in the Tuam home.
Local historian, Catherine Corless’s research and revelations last year led to international headlines in the latest scandal to envelop the Catholic Church in Ireland. Whilst she has found death certificates for 796 infants who died at the home between 1925 and 1961, she has been unable to discover burial records for the majority of them. Ms Corless says that a full exhumation of the the site is necessary to establish how many of these infants may have been buried there. This, in turn, would help deduce how many of them may have been sent for adoption after death certificates were falsified.
Significant quantities of infant bones have already been found in a series of chambers which may have formed part of sewage treatment works.
A vigil was attended by hundreds of people at the site in Tuam on Sunday, at the same time as the Papal Mass in the Phoenix Park.