IRELAND
Irish Examiner
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Olivia Kelleher
The true picture of what happened in Bessborough Mother and Baby Home in Cork may be difficult to hear but it needs to come out, the Bishop of Cloyne, William Crean said yesterday.
In an interview with Cork’s Red FM, Dr Crean said the story of what happened at the home should be told.
“This is part of our national story in the 20th century. It is only unfolding slowly. The truth may be very difficult. But it is best we have the truth in relation to it,” he said.
In 1922 the Sacred Heart Home in Bessborough, Co Cork, managed by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, was opened. Similar homes were set up by them in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, and Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, in the 1930s.
Following the discovery of human remains in a mass grave on the grounds of the mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway, there have been calls for similar investigations to take place in other facilities. The Mother and Baby Homes Commission says there is no decision to carry out any excavations at Bessborough.
June Goulding, a midwife who worked at Bessborough from 1951, described conditions there in The Light in the Window.
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