A Blight on the Living and the Dead: The Catholic Church buried babies in septic tanks — and still calls itself holy.
In 2016, the remains of 796 babies and toddlers were found in a septic tank behind a Catholic “mother and baby home” in Tuam, Galway.
Not buried. Not mourned. Just dumped — forgotten by the Church that branded their existence a sin, and the society that let it.
The Tuam home was run by the Bon Secours order of nuns from 1925 to 1961. Unmarried pregnant women — often rape survivors — were locked away, hidden from view. Their babies were taken, sold, or left to die.
Some lasted hours. Some days. All under three years old. When they died, they were stuffed into a concrete tank with the nuns’ shit — discarded like waste.
Tuam Wasn’t the Only Hellhole
Bessborough, Cork: Over 900 infant deaths reported from the 1920s to 1990s. The burial sites for 800 of their little bodies sites remain unknown.
Sean Ross Abbey, Tipperary: More than 1,000 dead children, many forcibly adopted.
Castlepollard, Westmeath: Over 200 recorded deaths of women and babies.
These weren’t isolated scandals. This was systemic abuse, disguised as salvation. Over 9,000 children died in the care of the church, and it happened not in ancient history — but in living memory.
And Still, They Preach
The Church presided over one of the most brutal, calculated systems of cruelty in modern Irish history.
And yet it continues to preach about morality.
To shape public policy.
To run schools and hospitals.
To be consulted on “family values.”
They buried babies in tanks — and still speak of the sanctity of life.
They raped children — and still call themselves shepherds.
Where is Christ in any of this?
A Rotting Moral Compass
This is not about “a few bad apples.” It is institutional rot — sanctified, defended, and tax-exempt. A moral empire built on fear and obedience. On silence and shame.
And the rot runs deep and it runs wide.
Organised religion — not just the Catholic Church — has too often used faith to enforce submission:
Preaching humility while hoarding wealth
Punishing doubt while demanding blind faith
Criminalising sin while sanctifying cruelty
What we’re dealing with is a moral carceral complex — spiritual obedience fused with institutional punishment. Where the unwed, the queer, the poor, the questioning are cast as moral failures and sentenced accordingly.
Not always with prison bars.
Sometimes with a gravestone no one carved.
Sometimes with no grave at all.
No More Excuses
Tuam happened in the 20th century.
Survivors are still alive.
So are some of their abusers.
And yet:
No real justice.
No trials.
Just vague apologies and “those were different times.”
There is no moral authority in an institution that needed an excavator to face its sins.
There is no redemption without justice.
No holiness without truth.
No salvation in silence.
There are 796 reasons to rage. And that’s just Tuam.