IRELAND
Deutsche Welle
Ireland’s last Magdalene laundry is up for sale, but campaigners want a memorial to women who endured abuse at the hands of religious orders. Ruairi Casey reports from Dublin.
A crowd of hundreds filled Dublin’s Sean MacDermott Street in 1979 when Pope John Paul II passed by. Local residents were hopeful he would visit Our Lady of Lourdes Church, which holds the shrine of Matt Talbot, a leading figure in the Irish Church’s temperance movement.
The pope could hardly have failed to notice the dense mass of worshippers, but he did not stop.
What he may not have seen was a long, brown-brick Victorian building on the opposite side of the street, one of Ireland’s now notorious Magdalene laundries, where women were incarcerated and forced to work in slave-like conditions.
Out of sight and mind for most of its history, it has now become a focal point in Ireland’s coming to terms with its cruel and brutal treatment of women in the 20th century.
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