In a move steeped in sorrow and long-overdue accountability, Irish authorities have begun exhuming what is believed to be the remains of 796 children from a mass grave at the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway.
The site, once a Catholic-run facility for unwed mothers, operated between 1925 and 1961 under the care of the Bon Secours Sisters. What lay hidden beneath its grounds was first exposed in 2014 by local historian Catherine Corless, who uncovered death records for nearly 800 children — most of whom, she found, were never granted individual graves or formal burials. Only two of those children were officially documented as buried in local cemeteries. The rest, investigators now believe, were placed in a repurposed underground septic tank.
The Irish government has since launched a full forensic excavation, a painstaking effort that is expected to take up to two years. The goal: to recover, identify, and respectfully rebury the remains of the hundreds of infants and young children who died in the institution — victims of neglect, disease, and societal shame.
“This marks a critical step in our national reckoning with the dark legacy of institutional abuse,” a government spokesperson stated, emphasizing the importance of restoring dignity to those who were once discarded by both Church and State.
The Tuam investigation has become emblematic of broader efforts across Ireland to confront a grim past in which