Tuam’s nuns have been unfairly demonised ​​Western People 17.2.2026 Brendan Hoban

In 2014 when news broke that 796 children had died in the Mother and Baby Home in Tuamand there were no burial records even though death certificates existed, it opened up an ongoing process that produced a government Commission of Investigation, a sustained and sometimes savage attack on the Bon Secour Sisters who had responsibility for the home and at present an ongoing excavation at the site to establish the facts.

The Children’s Home in Tuam is perhaps the most notorious example of the depravities of Catholic Ireland, and the nuns who ran it have become a byword for cruelty. But the reality of what happened could turn out to be more complicated

In 2023, the government of Ireland offered three new postgraduate scholarships for research into childhood disadvantage. The scholarships were established “in memory of the children who died in Mother and Baby Institutions” and the scheme was named after a remarkable woman called Alice Litster (1894-1980).

A Call for a New Reformation by John S. Spong

In the 16th century the Christian Church, which had been the source of much of the stability of the western world, entered a period of internal and violent upheaval. In time this upheaval came to be called the Protestant Reformation, but during the violence itself, it was referred to by many less attractive adjectives. The institution that called itself the body of Christ broke first into debate, then acrimony, then violence and counter-violence and finally into open warfare between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians.