Kathleen, Mary, Joseph… In Ireland, the exhumation of 796 children who died in a religious home started

Objective: to find, to analyze, identify if possible and to bury the remains of children with dignity, including many newborns. &#13. Therefore,

They were called Kathleen, Mary or Joseph: the first exhumations of the 796 children buried without burial between 1925 and 1960 in a religious home in Ireland began on Monday, more than ten years after the discovery of the site.

After having completed mid-June the perimeter of the old septic tank of the St Mary home of the good rescue sisters in Tuam. In addition, in the west of the country, Irish experts will officially begin the excavation. For example, Objective: to find, to analyze, identify if possible and to bury the remains of children with dignity, including many newborns.

&#13. However,

These operations, carried out with the assistance of experts from Colombia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, must last two years. However, DNA samples have been collected from around thirty relatives. Moreover, a process that must be extended in the coming months in order to bring together as much genetic evidence as possible.

This quest, which aims to release these 796 children from oblivion began in 2014. At that time, Catherine Corless, a local historian, revealed detailed evidence attesting to their death in this home. His research. which causes a shock wave in the country and has a global impact, lead to a macabre discovery: a common pit. “There was no burial register. no cemetery, no statue, no cross, absolutely nothing,” kathleen, mary, joseph… ireland, exhumation said the historian, describing her decades of work as “hard fight”.

The institution shaved in 1972 – Kathleen, mary, joseph… ireland, exhumation

“No one wanted to listen to,” she told AFP. “I begged: get these babies out of these sewers, offer them the worthy Christian burial that has been refused!” In vain. Things move in 2021. A national commission of inquiry into mistreatment imposed in these homes underlines “alarming” infant mortality levels in these institutions. where 9,000 children died.

She also established that 56,000 single women and 57,000 children passed through 18 homes of this type between 1922 and 1998. At the time. pregnant women outside marriage were locked in these homes under the impetus of the Irish state and the powerful Catholic Church, which often managed them kathleen, mary, joseph… ireland, exhumation together.

They gave birth there before being separated from their children, often given to adoption. “It was denied these children to the slightest human right during their lives. as well as their mothers, and they were deprived of dignity and respect in death,” said Anna Corrigan, two members of the siblings may be buried in Tuam.

The institution of the good help sisters was shaved in 1972 and gave way to a subdivision. The septic pit remained intact. It was not until 2022 that a law officially authorized the excavations. And in 2023, a team was finally appointed to conduct operations in Tuam. The slowness of the process has been denounced several times by relatives of the victims.

Despite everything. at 71 years old, Catherine Corless is delighted with this new advance, which she would have, by her own admission, “never thought to arrive”.