A forensic team has begun a dig to search for the remains of nearly 800 infants at a former "mother and baby home" in Ireland.
The excavation commenced yesterday in Tuam, County Galway.
For decades, locals whispered that these children - who died at the home for unmarried mothers between 1925 and its closure in 1961 - were dumped into a former sewage tank, known ominously as “the pit.”
Local historian Catherine Corless first unearthed the shocking record of 798 deaths in 2014.
Only two children received marked burials, while the rest were presumed entombed in the site’s underground mass grave.
“I'm feeling very relieved,” she told Sky News as the excavation began. “It's been a long, long journey. Not knowing what's going to happen, if it's just going to fall apart or if it's really going to happen.”
The historian dismissed the justification of Catholic charity: “The church preached to look after the vulnerable, the old and the orphaned, but they never included illegitimate children for some reason or another in their own psyche.
"I never, ever understand how they could do that to little babies, little toddlers. Beautiful little vulnerable children.”
The 2014 revelations didn’t come out of nowhere.
In 1975, two boys discovered human bones in the septic tank, then dismissed as famine-era relics.
But Corless’s painstaking research reawakened this forgotten horror: Catholic-run homes routinely bottled “illegitimate” babies, cutting them off from their mothers without burial rites.
Between 1925 and 1961, Tuam’s St Mary’s Home, managed by the Sisters of Bon Secours, recorded numerous deaths from malnutrition, measles, and tuberculosis. Despite this, nearly 796 children vanished under its grounds.
Now, led by investigator Daniel MacSweeney, a team has begun a forensic excavation that may take up to two years.
Their mission is to identify remains, conduct DNA testing, and ensure a dignified reburial befitting each child’s memory.
For Tuam-born Annette McKay, now 71, the dig isn’t just historic - it’s deeply personal.
Her half-sister, Mary Margaret, born to their mother at the home in 1942, died six months later. Annette recounts her mother’s trauma: “She was pegging washing out and a nun came up behind her and said ‘the child of your sin is dead.’”
Separated by time and tragedy, she dreams of reuniting her mother and sister with a proper resting place. She spoke with hope: “I don't care if it's a thimbleful [of remains]… That's fitting.”
Corless’s work triggered a 2021 state apology, acknowledging “an appalling level of infant mortality.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin lamented Ireland’s “completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy,” noting how young women and their children were coerced into paying “a terrible price.”
The Sisters of Bon Secours apologized, admitting the children were “buried in a disrespectful and unacceptable way” and offered compensation.