Irish team begins search for children's remains at former home for unwed mothers

Rome Newsroom, Jul 16, 2025 / 15:45 pm

A team of 18 archaeologists, anthropologists, and forensic scientists have begun excavating an old septic tank this week at the former St. Mary's Mother and Baby Home run by the Bon Secours Sisters in Tuam, County Galway, western Ireland, now the site of a housing development.

Over the next two years, according to The Irish Times, an excavating machine will go through the site in search of remains for 796 children allegedly buried, in the words of the Bon Secours Sisters “in a disrespectful and unacceptable way” between 1925 and 1960.

The Bon Secours Sisters have released a statement apologizing for the treatment of the deceased babies, and their mothers during that time.

The goal of the excavation is to find, analyze, identify, and provide a decent burial for the children's remains — many of them newborns.

To identify them, DNA samples have been collected from more than 80 relatives who were invited to a symbolic event on July 8 to commemorate the start of the work.

The excavations — carried out with the help of experts from Colombia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States — are underway, some 11 years after local historian Catherine Corless revealed that 796 children had died at the institution between 1925 and 1961. Only two of the deceased children were buried in local graveyards.

In 2014, Corless published the investigation that, three years later, led to the discovery of the mass grave. In 2017, a preliminary excavation in the area found human remains, giving support to the suspicion of a mass burial site in "inhumane conditions."

"These babies are in a sewage system. They have to be taken out of there," Corless said Monday, after the site was enclosed with an 8-foot fence, according to The Irish Times.

‘Alarming’ infant mortality levels at these facilities

In January 2021, a national commission of inquiry revealed in a comprehensive report the “alarming” levels of infant mortality in these institutions for unmarried mothers in Ireland.

The 3,000-page document details what happened between 1922 and 1998 in 14 homes for unmarried mothers and a sample of four other county centers, where abandoned children and sick or disabled adults also lived.

In total, some 9,000 children died in these facilities, representing 15% of the 57,000 children who, along with their mothers, passed through the 18 homes investigated during the period under study.

One of the most shocking episodes occurred in 1943 in the Irish town of Bessborough, where three out of four children died in the care of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. According to the commission, more than 900 children died in that institution between 1922 and 1998, and to this day no documented burial site has been identified.

Widespread indifference toward the children

Most of the deaths, according to the documentation, occurred from respiratory illnesses or gastroenteritis. The report attributed these to appalling sanitary conditions, with limited access to hot, running water or a lack of sanitation, coupled with overcrowding and a lack of healthcare training for staff.

The report emphasized that the high mortality rate was known to local authorities, who failed to act for years due to “widespread indifference” toward these children.

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When the report was made public, the Sisters of Bon Secours offered an official apology and pledged to contribute €12.97 million (over $15 million) to the government's victim compensation fund.

The order's then-regional superior, Sister Eileen O'Connor, acknowledged that “the babies and children who died were buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way” and that the congregation “was part of the system in which they suffered hardship, loneliness, and terrible hurt.”

The former archbishop-elect of Dublin, Dermot Farrell, stated: “We can no longer run away from the extremely painful truths about how, collectively and individually, we failed in our duty of care to vulnerable women and their children.”

The Irish government also publicly apologized, as several of the centers investigated were public, although in practice they were run by nuns.

The former president of the Irish Bishops' Conference, Eamon Martin, asked that “anyone who can help, to do so” so that the babies can have a decent burial where their families can remember them.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.