Nuns to be given 'sole ownership' of new National Maternity Hospital

The Religious Sisters of Charity group, who helped manage Magdalene laundries across Ireland, is set to be given "sole ownership" of the new €300m National Maternity Hospital.
The hospital's relocation from Holles Street to the St Vincent’s hospital campus, which is currently owned by the religious group, is due to take place by 2021. To part-fund the move, the Department of Health will raise money through the sale of the current taxpayer-owned hospital on Holles Street in Dublin 2.

http://www.dublinlive.ie/news/health/nuns-given-sole-ownership-new-12905923 

Mother and baby home survivors call for charges of genocide against Irish state

A group of mothers who were former residents in mother and baby homes in Ireland wrote to the Irish Attorney General Máire Whelan calling for formal charges of genocide to be brought against the Irish state. The charge is made on the basis that the mothers did not give valid consent for the children to be adopted.

Between the late 1940s and early 1970s, 2,200 Irish infants were sent for adoption to America. There have been claims that birth and death certificates of adopted children were falsified in order for the adoption process to take place, claims that are currently under investigation by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission who are investigating the behavior of 18 of said homes as part of an independent inquiry.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/mother-and-baby-home-survivors-call-for-charges-of-genocide-against-irish-state 

The Sisters of Charity presided over abuse. They must not run a maternity hospital

In 2009 the Ryan report into child sexual abuse in state-funded, church-run institutions was published, costing the Irish taxpayer €82m. It uncovered decades of abuse endured by children in the ostensible care of Catholic organisations including the Sisters of Charity. This is the order of nuns that will be given ownership of the €300m state-of-the-art new National Maternity Hospital by the Irish government, They will be the “sole owners” of the taxpayer-funded facility

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/20/sisters-of-charity-abuse-maternity-hospital-irish-state 

The tireless determination of a modern Irish hero

Sometimes the darkest story has to be brought to light, no matter how sad or distressing that story might be or how uncomfortable it makes people feel afterwards.
When I visited Cambodia almost 15 years ago, I took in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum near the centre of Phnom Penh. This nondescript secondary school, in the middle of the city, was transformed into a grotesque concentration camp in the 1970s and as I walked around it my eyes filled with tears.

http://ciarantierney.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/the-tireless-determination-of-modern.html

Uncover the Mystery of a Murdered Nun in Netflix's The Keepers Trailer

After the huge success of (and controversy over) Making a Murderer, Netflix is bringing us another chilling true-crime tale in the form of The Keepers, the true story of the shocking murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a Baltimore nun. Her murder has never been solved, and almost 50 years later this seven-part series looks to investigate the seemingly political reasons for her murder.
The Catholic Church has faced more than its fair share of scandals throughout the years, and this case is no different. Baltimore residents described Sister Cathy as a “spirit of compassion and kindness,” and it seems as if her disappearance may have had something to do with information she had on a sexual scandal within the church, which is not surprising, but is profoundly scary and sad. Hopefully, through this series and further investigation, justice will prevail.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/04/uncover-the-mystery-of-a-murdered-nun-in-the-keepe.html 

Anger over nuns' role in National Maternity Hospital

A deal to build a new Irish maternity hospital on land controlled by an order of nuns has been described as "an outrage and an insult to all women". The Irish Labour Party reacted angrily to reports that the nuns' firm will have "sole ownership" of the new state-funded National Maternity Hospital.
The Sisters of Charity are major share-holders in the firm that owns the land. The order has so far failed to pay its share of a compensation scheme for victims of institutional abuse.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39643164# 

How a global board games giant exploited Ireland's Magdalene women

It’s almost impossible to think of my childhood in 1980s Dublin and not to think about Elsie. Elsie, my great aunt, was hilarious, caring, kind hearted, and good natured. But there was a strange, childlike innocence about her. She was, I would later figure out, institutionalised by a totalitarian regime that had corruption and cruelty built into its DNA.
When we normally think of the Magdalene laundry scandals, the era most of us tend to associate it with is the Catholic theocracy of the 1950s. Black and white photos of women with scowls on their faces and nuns in white robes. It’s something we recognise from films. But not something we associate with modern Ireland.

http://littleatoms.com/penance-industry 

Dublin faces protests over hospital role for Catholic Church

Dublin: Public pressure mounted today on the Irish government over plans to give ownership of a new 300- million-euro maternity hospital to a Catholic religious order mired in historical abuse of women. More than 60,000 people have signed a petition and a number of demonstrations have been organised against the decision, which involves the controversial Sisters of Charity.
The order still owes three million euros towards a state-sponsored redress scheme over the ‘Magdalene Laundries’, where unmarried mothers suffered decades of physical and psychological abuse under conditions of forced labour.

http://medicaldialogues.in/dublin-faces-protests-over-hospital-role-for-catholic-church/ 

Vatican requires nuns to manage hospital assets in accordance with Canon Law

The Irish State is planning to give a €300 million National Maternity Hospital to the Sisters of Charity. The Minister for Health has said that “only doctors and other healthcare professionals would make decisions about women’s health in the planned new Hospital.”
However, the Sisters of Charity are a Catholic religious order whose primary loyalties and obligations are to the Holy See and Canon Law. This obliges them to manage their assets in a way that reflect the evangelical witness of their mission.

http://atheist.ie/2017/04/hospital-assets-canon-law/ 

Priest defends Tuam nuns, says unmarried mothers sterilized in other countries

A prominent Catholic priest in Ireland has defended how the church handled the issue of unmarried mothers in institutions like Tuam in Galway, where 800 children have no burial records.

Father Padraig McCarthy was writing in the influential Catholic publication “The Furrow.”
He stated other countries used sterilization which was mandatory in some. He stated women were sent to asylums in many countries for being “feeble minded” and “promiscuous.”

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/priest-defends-tuam-nuns-says-unmarried-mothers-sterilized-in-other-countries# 

Endemic' rape and abuse of Irish children in Catholic care, inquiry finds

Beatings and humiliation by nuns and priests were common at institutions that held up to 30,000 children, Ryan report states.  Rape and sexual molestation were "endemic" in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages, a report revealed today. The nine-year investigation found that Catholic priests and nuns for decades terrorised thousands of boys and girls in the Irish Republic, while government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation.
The high court judge Sean Ryan today unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland's commission into child abuse, which drew on testimony from thousands of former inmates and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions. Police were called to the news conference amid angry scenes as victims were prevented from attending.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/20/irish-catholic-schools-child-abuse-claims 

Striking Photo of Sleeping Street Kids and Passing Nuns Goes Viral

Priests, nuns, pastors, and other religious entities always preach about helping the poor and those in need, feeding the hungry, helping the sick, etc. Most will also tell you that contraceptives and other modern methods of family planning are bad, even ‘evil’, because life is precious and that every person deserves to be born – and we’re not talking about abortion here but the conception of the child.
That’s already a given – yet do they always practice what they preach?

http://buzz.definitelyfilipino.net/articles/2017/04/striking-photo-of-sleeping-street-kids-and-passing-nuns-goes-viral/

Christians not assigned only one guardian angel

Christians are assigned not only one guardian angel since God might have tasked numerous angels to guard each believer, according to pastor, author and teacher John Piper.
In an entry published on Desiring God on April 4, Piper discusses angels in detail. Taking off from Matthew 18:10, the Christian author asked what Jesus meant when he told his disciples not to despise his childlike followers because "their angels always see the face" of God in heaven.

http://www.christiandaily.com/article/christians-not-assigned-only-one-guardian-angel-says-john-piper/60261.htm 

Irish woman discovers long-lost brother after they both do online DNA test

An Irish woman says her "head can't stop spinning" after a chance DNA test led to her brother that she never knew existed getting in touch

After Cathy Hanley Drury's friend asked her to do a test with Ancestery.com last year, the last thing she expected was for her long-lost brother Jim Smith to contact her. It emerged that Cathy and Jim's late mother Mary Jo Hanley (née Higgins) gave birth to her son in a mother and baby home in London in 1948, before she later returned to Ireland.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/irish-woman-discovers-longlost-brother-after-they-both-do-online-dna-test-35572544.html 

Commissioner for Human Rights criticises Irish Government response to Magdalene survivors

The Irish state has come under criticism for its response to survivors of Magdalene Laundries and other historical abuses.
A report released today from the Council of Europe calls on the Irish Government to widen the terms of reference into the inquiry into Mother and Baby homes.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/commissioner-for-human-rights-criticises-irish-government-response-to-magdalene-survivors-783588.html

Irish church pins hopes on 2018 meeting of families

Ireland's clergy sex abuse scandal has severely damaged the Catholic Church's reputation in the once-devout nation. Irish church officials hope that a meeting of Catholic families that is expected to bring Pope Francis to Ireland next year will help families regain trust in the church after the clerical sex abuse scandal.
Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said Thursday that young people in particular “have been very scandalized” about the decades of abuse and cover-up that have eroded the credibility of the church in Ireland.

http://www.pressherald.com/2017/03/31/irish-church-pins-hopes-on-2018-meeting-of-families/

Conversion of city Magdalene Laundry to women’s refuge delayed amid mother and baby homes controversy

Galway Bay fm newsroom – The conversion of the old Magdalene Laundry at Forster Street in the city has been delayed until the outcome of the future of an investigation into mother and baby homes is determined.
Domestic Violence Outreach Worker with COPE Galway Waterside House, Jackie Carroll has given a presentation on the service to members of the City Joint Policing Committee. It was revealed at the JPC meeting that breaches of barring, safety and protection orders have almost doubled in the Galway city garda district.

http://connachttribune.ie/conversion-of-city-magdalene-laundry-to-womens-refuge-delayed-amid-mother-and-baby-homes-controversy/ 

Breaking the rule of Silence

John Kennedy has a long connection with the Good Shepherds in Limerick. His family were, for many generations, involved with the Good Shepherd Order. He visited his aunts who were Sisters in the Order in Limerick many times as a child and in adulthood John managed the Good Shepherd Laundry from the mid 1970s. He eventually took over the business as a private enterprise in the 1980s. He has an immense knowledge of the Laundry, the women who were there and the nuns. Here John shares stories of the women, gives a detailed account of how the Laundry operated and shares a unique insight into the Good Shepherd Institution and how it functioned.

http://www.magdalenelaundrylimerick.com/johnk.html 

We are ashamed of our government, say abuse survivors who have been waiting 17 months for compensation

Historical abuse survivors have accused Northern Ireland's politicians of putting their own needs before victims as they continue to wait for financial payments promised 17 months ago.
Victims have warned that many have been left feeling suicidal or facing financial ruin as the current Stormont impasse means that the findings and recommendations of a four-year inquiry into state and church abuse have still not been presented to the Assembly.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/we-are-ashamed-of-our-government-say-abuse-survivors-who-have-been-waiting-17-months-for-compensation-35615606.html 

Mother and Baby Homes report misses the mark

WE WAITED seven months for the Government to publish the second interim report of the Commission to Inquire into Mother and Baby Homes. It did not make for encouraging reading.  Running to 16 pages, the report has three main sections — on redress, its terms of reference, and on the issue of the false registration of births.
However, on the issue of the real elephant in the room — illegal adoptions — it was remarkably, and worryingly, lukewarm. In fact, the section is not even titled “illegal adoptions”. It is given the more euphemistic title — one favoured by government departments — “false registration of birth”.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/mother-and-baby-homes-report-misses-the-mark-447654.html 

Immoral and repulsive': Fury at Zappone's refusal for redress for mother and baby home survivors

THE COALITION OF Mother and Baby Home Survivors (CMABS) has said that it “utterly rejects” Minister Katherine Zappone’s refusal to offer redress to survivors of these homes.
Measures of redress were recommended in the second interim report by the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes, published yesterday.

http://www.thejournal.ie/zappone-redress-mothers-3336738-Apr2017/

Govt rejects immediate redress for mother and baby home children

The Government should re-examine the exclusion of children who lived without their mothers in the country's mother and baby homes and county homes from the 2002 Residential Institutions Redress Scheme, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes has suggested.
As an alternative, it has suggested that Cabinet look again at establishing a similar redress scheme for the homes' former residents.

http://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2017/0411/866974-mother-and-baby-homes-report/ 

"The nuns forcibly separated us" recalls former Tuam baby snatched from his mother

When John Rodgers’ mother was two and a half years old she was charged with begging on the streets of Dublin and sent by a chief justice to an industrial school. Released at age 16, she was raped and later gave birth to her son John, for which she was sent to the notorious mother and baby home in Tuam. Rodgers tells Cahir O'Doherty about their shattering experiences and the shadows they cast over two long separated lives.

When John Rodgers’ mother Bridie was two and a half years old she was arrested for begging on the streets of Dublin. A judge decided the best thing to do to reform her character was send her to a remote industrial school, where it was stipulated she would remain until her 16th birthday.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/no-country-for-mothers-and-babies-reality-for-a-son-born-in-tuam# 

After 44 years "I am still seeking my mother" says Mother and Baby home survivor

Ronan James O’Halloran was born on December 9, 1973 at St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home on Dublin’s Navan Road. Now aged 43, he has spent the past two and a half decades searching for the woman forced to give him up at birth.

“From a very young age I knew I was adopted,” he told IrishCentral, but it was only when he was 18 that he was allowed to begin the search for his birth family. With his legal majority freshly acquired he contacted the Catholic adoption agency, Cúnamh, but his efforts were bluntly rebuked

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/dublin-mother-and-baby-home-survivor-s-struggle-to-find-his-birth-mom# 

'A tsunami of survivors': Law firms swamped by historical child abuse victims

Australian legal firms are experiencing unprecedented demand from people who have suffered alleged child sexual abuse in institutions such as churches, schools and youth groups.
The demand has been spurred on by revelations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and legal reforms which allow survivors to make a claim for damages regardless of when the abuse allegedly occurred.

http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/4570843/a-tsunami-of-survivors-law-firms-swamped-by-historical-child-abuse-victims/?cs=7 

Ireland less severe on unmarried mothers, says priest

The treatment of unmarried mothers between the 1920s and 1960s was “less severe” in Ireland than in other countries, partly due to the strength of Catholic teaching, a priest has claimed.
In an article in The Furrow, a Catholic journal, Father Pádraig McCarthy, a retired parish priest from Sandyford, says other European countries had far more “draconian ways” of dealing with women who were sent to institutions for being supposedly “feeble-minded” or “promiscuous”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ireland-less-severe-on-unmarried-mothers-says-priest-l3rmc0xz3 

Government was forced to set up redress scheme, say Oblates

The €1.5 billion redress scheme for those abused in Catholic institutions was forced on the Government of the day by victims groups and their legal representatives, a statement by one of the 18 religious congregations investigated by the Ryan Commission has said.

It also said findings in the Ryan Commission report were “not immune to challenge” and were “opinions come to by the Commission on a basis that would not be sufficient in a court of law”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/government-was-forced-to-set-up-redress-scheme-say-oblates-1.3035240 

No one cried stop to Ireland’s Catholic institutions

I recall clearly a shocking conversation that I had about 20 years ago, with a fine man from Tralee, Co. Kerry about the Christian Brothers Industrial School in that town. He recalled that some of the boys confined in the industrial school attended classes with him in The Green, the brothers' local high school. He remembered that when the final bell rang to end the school day they would bolt for their living quarters because if they tarried at all they claimed they would be beaten.
My other memory of that conversation is much more disturbing. He told me that local people would sometimes hear screams at night from the school.  As a teenager, he was surprised by this and asked his father, who worked as a laborer in the town, what was going on to cause such nocturnal cries.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irishvoice/no-one-cried-stop-to-ireland-s-catholic-institutions#.WOQmxgcU6wU.facebook 

Nearly 300 abuse allegations made against Nazareth Sisters

A total of 294 physical and emotional abuse allegations were made against 61 Nazareth Sisters, 40 now deceased. None was convicted in the courts. Just 115 were reported to police and health authorities. Eight of the accused sisters remain in ministry, 13 accused are retired and one has left the congregation.

The Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children was “unable to assess the extent to which the Sisters of Nazareth have dealt with the allegations and concerns that have arisen, due to the unavailability of any contemporaneous case file records”.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/nearly-300-abuse-allegations-made-against-nazareth-sisters-1.3037766 

Call for genocide prosecution over mothers’ homes

A group of mothers formerly resident in mother and baby homes has written to Máire Whelan, the attorney-general, asking her to prosecute the state for genocide on the basis that their children were adopted without valid consent.
They have also asked the International Criminal Court to informally assist Whelan with such a prosecution.

http://irishfirstmothers.com/press/Call-For-Genocide-Prosecution-Over-Mothers-Homes%20_Sunday-Times.html 

Historical abuse survivors continue to wait for compensation in Northern Ireland

Historical abuse survivors have accused Northern Ireland's politicians of putting their own needs before victims as they continue to wait for financial payments promised 17 months ago.

Victims have warned that many have been left suicidal or facing financial ruin as the current Stormont impasse means that the findings and recommendations of a four-year inquiry into state and church abuse have still not been presented to the assembly.

https://www.sundayworld.com/news/northern-ireland/historical-abuse-survivors-continue-to-wait-for-compensation-in-northern-ireland 

Catholic Church-run homes to be focus of child abuse inquiry.

The second phase of the Scottish child abuse inquiry will investigate children’s homes run by the Catholic Church. The inquiry is examining historical allegations of the abuse of children in care and has been taking statements from  witnesses since last spring.
Officials said the first part of the second phase starting in autumn will focus on homes run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, such as Smyllum Park in Lanark, Bellevue House in Rutherglen, St Joseph’s Hospital in Rosewell, St Vincent’s School for the Deaf/Blind in Glasgow and Roseangle Orphanage (St Vincent’s) in Dundee.

Clann: Ireland’s Unmarried Mothers and their Children: Gathering the Data

Clann Are you an adopted person? Are you a natural mother whose child was adopted because you were unmarried?Were you born in a Mother and Baby Home, County Home or similar place?
Are you a relative of an adopted person? Did you work for an institution or agency involved with unmarried mothers and their children?

http://clannproject.org/