'Weed nuns' who took vows to a HIGHER power:

Sister Kate is not your average nun.  In truth, she’s not a nun at all – and she’s certainly not average. She's the founding member of the Sisters of the Valley, and her order subscribes to a higher power. Her vows are not ones of Catholicism, but of servitude, activism, and spirituality, and her rituals are guided by the cycles of the moon.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4690250/Californian-nuns-make-millions-medical-marijuana.html 

Man sues Boston archdiocese citing sex abuse at orphanage

BOSTON — A New York man is suing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston for sexual abuse he says he suffered decades ago at a church-affiliated home for orphaned and foster children.
Andre Jones, who’s 51, said Monday that he was abused in the 1970s by the late Brother Edward Anthony Holmes, a supervisor and counselor at the now-shuttered Nazareth Child Care Center.

http://www.therepublic.com/2017/07/17/us-church-abuse-lawsuit/ 

Religious order set for windfall with Bessborough sale

The religious order which owns the Bessborough campus in Cork City is in for a multi-million euro windfall after it confirmed it is to put the site up for sale.
Staff at the facility were informed on Thursday that plans are underway to sell the large site in Blackrock in a process that could take up to two years. The campus is a former mother and baby home and more recently the setting for the Bessborough Centre, a charity that works with vulnerable families, including offering therapeutic care and education.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/religious-order-set-for-windfall-with-bessborough-sale-454917.html 

The girl who grew up in 13 different homes

A young Magherafelt woman has told how she had 13 different homes as a child and attended seven different schools. Andrea Glenn (20) told her story of life in care as a group which helped her, VOYPIC, was awarded £591,036 from Big Lottery Fund’s Empowering Young People Programme for the Speaking Up; Leading Out project.

http://www.midulstermail.co.uk/news/the-girl-who-grew-up-in-13-different-homes-1-8063259 

My story (Airing my Dirty Laundry)

I am a Mum (to five boys), Grandmother (to five grandchildren), Author, Trainer, Speaker, and Advocate. I like to sketch and paint, play the Irish bodhran and learn the Irish language. 

I have learned to embrace life instead of hiding from it, in fear, depression, and isolation. I am a survivor of child abuse, sibling abuse, spousal abuse, religious abuse, and a survivor of the Good Shepherd Laundries.

http://www.breakthroughoptions.org/307252848 

New case of sexual abuse at convent school accepted by Catholic Church

In a "very rare" ruling, the Catholic Church has found a nun guilty of sexually abusing a child in her care, it has emerged.
Following an inquiry, the Catholic Church has ruled Mother Lucia guilty of historic sexual and physical abuse against a Christchurch schoolboy "on the balance of probabilities". The prioress died in 1997, aged 90.
In November 2015, a West Coast man, who did not want to be named, brought complaints against the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions under the church's Path to Healing protocol.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/94073054/new-case-of-sexual-abuse-at-convent-school-accepted-by-catholic-church 

Survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby scandal deserve justice

It is true, as survivors said it was. Under a small patch of grass by a playground in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, the bodies of the children who died in the local Mother and Baby home lie in unmarked graves. The Mother and Baby homes of Ireland – the last of which closed in 1996 – were run like punishment hostels for unmarried pregnant women. Their children were taken for adoption, fostering or the horror of the industrial schools, or they died in their thousands, of malnutrition and neglect. In some cases the bodies were used for dissection in medical schools.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/09/survivors-ireland-mother-baby-scandal-justice-tuam 

70 Convent slave laundries? Magdalen asylums in Australia

A staple of extreme Protestant propaganda in the first half of the twentieth century was the accusation of ‘convent slave laundries’. Anti-Catholic organs like The Watchman and  The Rock regularly alleged extremely harsh conditions in Roman Catholic convent laundries and reported stories of abductions into them and escapes from them.
In Ireland, the scandal of Magdalen laundries has been the subject of extensive official inquiries. Allegations of widespread near-slave conditions and harsh punishments turned out to be substantially true. The Irish state has apologized, memoirs have been written, compensation paid, a movie made. Something similar occurred in England.

http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/magdalen.pdf 

Clerical sex-abuse cover-up in Australian church

Antipodean Booker-winner Thomas Keneally's new novel tells the story of a liberal priest's uncovering of paedophilia in the Catholic church during the mid-1990s.

In an early scene from Thomas Keneally's poignant new novel about clerical sex abuse, a young Australian woman called Maureen Breslin goes searching for her Irish roots on the Donegal coast. She is particularly impressed by an outdoor Mass stone, where fugitive Catholic priests used to hold ceremonies for their followers in defiance of Britain's Penal Laws.

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/clerical-sexabuse-coverup-in-australian-church-35831397.html 

Nuns performed acts of sadism on children, Australian inquiry finds

Sadistic nuns at a notorious Australian orphanage in Queensland dished out abuse in a toxic environment that festered due in part to inadequate government scrutiny, supervision and training, a royal commission has found.
The child sex abuse royal commission last year examined cruel treatment of 13 former residents of St Joseph's Orphanage, which was operated by the Sisters of Mercy between 1940 and 1975.
The men and women – now aged from their 50s to 80s – recalled abuse at Neerkol, ranging from public floggings and being walked on in high heels to being made to drape urine-soaked sheets over their heads.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/79205204/nuns-performed-acts-of-sadism-on-children-australian-inquiry-finds

Nuns abused children at four Catholic-run care homes, inquiry finds

Nuns at four Catholic-run care homes in Northern Ireland physically and emotionally abused children in their care, an inquiry has found. These nuns have helped to set up a school for transgender pupils in India The details emerged during an inquiry into historical institutional child abuse in Northern Ireland.
Judge Sir Anthony Hart who compiled the major report said there were also instances of sexual abuse at the homes carried out by priests and lay people. The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) was set up in 2012 to look into allegations of child abuse in 22 children’s homes and other residential institutions between 1922 to 1995.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/01/20/nuns-abused-children-at-four-catholic-run-care-homes-inquiry-finds-6393632/ 

Podcast: Ireland's buried babies

Catherine Corless has been haunted all her life by memories of the skinny children from a Catholic home for unmarried mothers in her Irish town. Now, her years of work have exposed the truth about what was hidden in the sewers beneath the home. Reuters correspondent Estelle Shirbon reports.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-audio-9june-idUSKBN1901Z2