For generations, the Catholic Church ruled that babies who died before being baptised could not enter heaven – but were relegated to limbo. They were denied funerals and could not be buried in church graveyards. For the families of these babies, though, the grief lives on, writes CIAN TRAYNOR
THERE ARE countless mass infant graves scattered around Ireland, left unmarked, unconsecrated and containing hundreds of bodies.
They are a legacy of Roman Catholic tradition, which stipulated that babies who died before being baptised did not go to heaven, but to an in-between state known as limbo.
Baptism, it decreed, corrected humanity’s original sin in falling away from God. As a consequence, children who died at birth were forbidden to be buried on consecrated ground and denied a funeral service.
Instead they were buried in anonymous plots known as “cillín”. Veiled in secrecy, mired in shame, the burials usually took place in the middle of the night along cemetery boundaries to get the babies as close to sacred ground as possible.
Limbo complicated the grieving process for Eithne Hyland’s stillbirths in 1974, 1977 and 1982, posing insurmountable challenges to her faith.
“When you saw healthy babies growing up, you couldn’t keep your sanity thinking yours were floating around in limbo, as if they were stuck in some maze they couldn’t get out of. That image could torment you,” she says.
A priest said Hyland needed to be “churched” after her first stillbirth, kneeling her down with a hand on her shoulder before saying a prayer to cleanse her.
“I couldn’t understand: why would you need to be cleansed after bringing a life into the world? What has a mother done wrong in giving birth? That still gets me pretty mad. But back then our religion was so staunch that you had to go with what the Church told you.”
Hyland believes the Catholic Church’s attitude towards stillborns was so widely accepted that it made maternity wards unsympathetic places. Parents were not allowed to see or hold a child who died at birth, the logic being that any opportunity for attachment would prolong the grieving.
However, after Hyland’s second stillbirth the sight of her baby, Lisa, left at the end of the bed, tugged at her maternal instinct. “I said, ‘for Heaven’s sake, could you not wrap her up in something?’ The midwife called the student nurse, who came back with a plastic bag and the baby went in with the dirty sheets and everything. I thought, ‘oh my God, did she just throw her out?’” Parents were typically expected to bury the baby themselves. In Dublin, however, the city’s three main maternity hospitals had an arrangement with the non-denominational Glasnevin Cemetery where children were allowed to be buried in mass graves in what was known as the Angels Plot.
After her first stillbirth, Hyland was given the choice of burying her baby or having the hospital take care of it. “Naturally you’re trying to deal with the grief and shock, then suddenly you have to decide what to do. We wanted to protect the rest of the family from the trauma of burying a stillbirth at home but we didn’t know what the procedure was. So they buried our baby, for £5, and nothing more was said.”
Many parents held on to the bill, often framing it, as it was the only memento they had. Custom dictated it was never mentioned it again. “People said, ‘ah sure you’re young enough, you can start again’. After that, you were told to keep it to yourself; otherwise people thought you were looking for sympathy.” It wasn’t until the early 1990s that Hyland “found the courage” to look for her three stillborn babies.
“My husband said: ‘Listen, they’re in your heart. Don’t be puttin’ yourself through that.’ But I had this feeling it wasn’t finished and that it needed to be. To me, an unmarked grave was the real limbo.”
It was through Isands, a charity now known as A Little Lifetime Foundation, that Hyland learned she could trace the burials in Glasnevin Cemetery. They had kept exceptional records; all you needed was a name and date.
Ron Smith-Murphy, the charity’s chairwoman, lost a daughter at birth in 1993, as did her parents 29 years before. Like Hyland, Smith-Murphy didn’t know what her rights were as a mother when she was told her baby would live for minutes. That sense of vulnerability inspired her to establish a supportive framework for parents dealing with a similar loss, both past and present.
She constantly hears accounts of babies being snuck into adult coffins so they could be buried in consecrated ground, or unsympathetic priests telling mothers to bury their baby in the garden.
In many cases, she says, parents tend to return to the child they never got to be with once the rest of their family has been reared. “It’s almost like the grief was delayed because it was suppressed. Often when they’re near death, they talk of the baby they almost had. It’s heartbreaking.”
Change has been gradual. Isands successfully campaigned for a stillbirth register in 1995 and their booklet A Little Lifetime is now distributed to all maternity hospitals, offering parents crucial information and support.
Glasnevin’s Angels Plot, where more than 50,000 babies have been buried, with as many as 70 in each grave, has now been restored to include a memory garden and its annual blessings are well-attended.
“I suppose it’s a change in society, a change in the recognition of grief,” says George McCullough, the cemetery’s chief executive. “When I came here 24 years ago, the remains of babies would arrive at nine in the morning in the under-section of the hearse, with no parents, no ceremony and no recognition. It was an Irish solution to an Irish problem. Now you have 40 fathers, mothers, grandparents and children all with an emotional interest in the one spot for a loss from maybe 30 or 40 years ago.”
In 2007, the International Theological Commission announced there was “hope for the salvation of children who have died without baptism”. Though this upheld the concept of limbo, priests were finally allowed to bless limbo graves and bury the unbaptised in church grounds.
Fr Joe Brophy, who is based in Kiltegan, Co Carlow, says there is nothing about limbo in the scriptures and that it evolved from a climate of control. (St Augustine concluded in the fifth century that infants who die without baptism were consigned to hell.)
“The mind boggles,” he says. “Why would a child born without being baptised [not go to heaven]? It’s gobsmacking arrogance that a pope or someone in authority could say, ‘we’re sorry now but that child is not up to scratch for us’. And that’s really what we were saying. Thank God people have grown up a bit and we don’t take that anymore. It was nonsense.”
Smith-Murphy, and many others, feel the Vatican has not gone far enough. She believes parents of children who died prematurely are owed an apology and has campaigned for a plaque to be erected in every Church-owned cemetery to acknowledge those buried in its hedgerows and ditches.
“There are so many aspects of disrespect to these children and their families. Thankfully, we’re coming to a point where we’re acknowledging what they went through. But for a lot of them, it’s too late. My mum believed she would one day be reunited with her daughter, whereas my dad – a holy man who lived by the book – died believing he would never see her. They never got one shred of recognition from the maternity system, the State system or the Church.”
A Little Lifetime Foundation can be contacted on 01-872 6996 or isands.ie
Donegal’s Oilean na Marbh
Oileán na Marbh (Isle of the Dead) is an island off the west coast of Donegal that was used by locals to bury children who died at birth.
In September 2009, the neighbouring community of Carrickfinn decided to have the island blessed and to erect a commemorative stone to recognise the 1,200-plus children buried there.
“It was always thought that something should be done because after our generation, nobody would know anything about it. It would all be forgotten,” says Seamus Peter Boyle, who led the campaign.
Many present at the ceremony had grown up with the sight of mothers and fathers standing on the piers and gazing across the water, not knowing, as children, that what they were seeing were parents pining for their stillborn babies buried on the island.
For Boyle, now 66, one image in particular has stuck with him: a man leaving for the island in the middle of the night with a spade to bury his twins, whom he carried in a shoebox.
The ceremony was so well-received by the town that they repeated the commemoration last September and hope to continue doing so.
“It was beautiful, so it was,” says Boyle. “There was joy and sadness in it at the same time. Everybody’s just pleased that things have changed. It’s very sad that it was left like it was for so long. It never should have happened that way.”
The Irish Times 02/02/2011
My heart is broken, reading this and thinking of the child my grandmother lost shortly after birth. Whether she had time to have him baptised I don’t know, but there was never a grave to visit.
I am never so glad that I left christianity as I am when I read of the callousness of a church who would tell grieving parents that their child would be denied any hope of an afterlife because of the ‘sins’ of Adam and Eve, a fictional pair in an allegorical story.
Join the Church of England or Ireland then…we don’t have these silly rules. Babies are buried and do go to Heaven as indeed my Grandson who was stillbornhas.
Heaven only knows how many survivors are left to exist and live with the memories of past experiences in these institutions,It is an insult to us real survivors that these poeple who say they are representing us ,have the gall to call themselves survivors. Will they ever wake up and realise far from being like us, they have betrayed us and themselves and become abusers.Shame on them.
Oh you are right about bringing all of this to the surface. We have also to admit that nuns sometimes gave birth .What became of these children . priests have had kids too .The people who buy land in order to build houses should know if thay are living on graves.Istill remember in g b seeing the nuns carrying a coffin. it was an adult coffin. in the streets of dublin i had seen men carrying white coffins. this small girl dident even get a white one .But i thought then that the nuns only cared because she was dead .Iwas small then but i can still see those nuns caring for once. thay carried her small beaten body on thier shoulders
Well, babies wouldn’t have necessarily been born in a Magdalene laundry, Pauline. There was a distinct separation between women who were working in the laundries and women sent to mother and baby homes (although collusion between the two, and the industrial schools, was rampant). But neverthelees, we do know there are countless unmarked graves on the grounds at former Magdalene Laundries. Most famously, the graves discovered at High Park in 1993, which were exhumed, cremated and reinterred at Glasnevin (many with proper exhumation orders, no death certs, etc.) So there’s a huge scandal involving Magdalene graves that we would like to see addressed under our campaign for restorative justice for these women. Graves need to be identified, marked, recorded and properly cared for…whether they are babies, children or women. I’m sure the holy Catholic Church would like nothing better than to see all of us buried under the deep, dark soil, with no trace aboveground. But it should all be our mission to speak out for those buried voices.
What happened to babies who died in the madelaine homes.It does seem as if there are lots of graves all over . Seanie and Jack its nice to know you are there .and you know Seanie i have to keep my chin up to talk to others as i an only 5 foot tall . ha ha
One also has to wonder also at the huge numbers of children buried in unmarked mass graves all across Ireland who WERE baptised, but because they were born out of wedlock or in orphanages, apparently they weren’t ‘good enough’ for a decent, marked, named burial. Bessboro’, Sean Ross Abbey, Castlepollard, St. Patrick’s, The Bethany Home — all these mother and baby homes and orphanages have unmarked graves of children (and mothers).
It is as survivors that we are able to understand and share the terrible suffering both in mind and body that we still live with each day.and to see the strength each one of us possesses in our own way.To PAULINE,SEANIE, JAMES, RAYMOND, CATHERINE. SEAN M, SALLY and PADDY ,THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR SUPORT, IN YOUR OWN WAY, TO US ALL .
The debate – which is well worth looking at – and which is referred to in the above post is on my website and can be found by clicking the following link http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/catholic-church I hope this helps. Paddy.
The cruelty of this Catholic Church is just staggering. Seanie, of course I am sad to see your pain, but I am also grateful that this story brought tears to your eyes. I hope it brought you some relief; and some tiny bit of healing.
Seanie,I share that sadness with you.THE STEPHEN FRY INTELLIGENCE DEBATE is so correct about the Catholic Church.Paddy did have it on his site, maybe you would like to watch the debate. Take care Catherine.
Sally,
My heart goes out to you and your great loss, I still pray and will say a prayer for your mom, God bless her. I believe in an after life and we will all meet there one day.
Pauline, keep the chin up, we love you all and wish we could all sit together over a beer and laugh at life now, that is the escape route that I have taken and if I shed a tear now and again that’s OK too, it has been a long and hard journey but I warn you that I will draw strenth and compassion from stronger stalwart friends such as Jimmy and the rest of you, as Jimmy says, stay strong.
Seanie.
Thats got nothing to do with vows really . but its a good way of getting out of a uncomfortable situation. Just as treating women in such a way as if it was a crime to have had sex is downright stupid.but this started a long time after Jesus had died. its got nothing to do with Christianity or belief. It probably got the women back to work as fast as possible. they did not have the chance to mourn their children
Seanie, thank you for your kind comment’s . I experienced and saw a situation in the Industrial school, that i will never forget, while attending confession with a Priest i had confidence in, (he was not an abuser, and was viewed as a decent sort,) i confided to him that i had very few sin’s to confess to ,since my last visit, but asked him to talk to one of his colleague’s ,who was my main Abuser, and to ask him to leave me alone, not to take me from my bed at night, to his room, just for his sexual fun. The Priest replied to me, “my son, i cannot say anything to this man, due to our vow’s, he is a bad man , and is sick,and we must pray for his salvation, and forgiveness , and hope that our prayer’s get answered!
Seanie, this is my point, there were some good and decent Priest’s and Brother’s at that place,
and they knew who the Abuser’s among their flock were, yet done nothing about it, often quoting their vow’s!
I never for the life of me, thought i would see a similar situation in my adult life, and you have hit the nail on the head, in the part where you say you have never met a bad survivor, but you are saddened by the so called Group LEADER’S, who clearly qualify for that description.
Given our circumstance’s, and our situation regarding this statutory trust fund, their silence is deafening, and i would like to know WHY?
They are not subject to Vow’s, like the clergy, so what can it be?
It has been made very clear to all these Groups that most Survivor’s don’t want them, and have given thir reason’s, but it is obvious that the Group’s persist, and continue to ignore the complaint’s, and the Survivor’s they claim to represent. Where are they now?
Seanie, you have every reason to be saddened! I share that sadness with you, as im sure many other’s here do as well.
Keep strong, Jimmy
Hi Jimmy, Jack and all our good friends on this site, thanks for the shoulder, we all are damaged in one way or the other and mine is my cross which feels much lighter since meeting on Paddys site with all of you. Jimmy you were wronged and your are stronger for that, you came back fighting and your charater shows through. I have not met a bad survivor in my lifetime, however, I have been saddened by the so called group leaders, now that is a bad survivor.
Keep the chin up.
Seanie.
Sean
Realy touched by your words and how raw the pain stll is.
I lost two siblings in infancy and their deaths are recorded as being by malnutrition aged six weeks which my doctor friends tells me is highly unlikely to be the reason and the second sibling died of heart trouble again a very unusual occurance in young babies of six months.
My strong belief is that there was a policy of letting sickly infants of single mothers die and it was established practice right through from the dark ages to the 1960’s.
I believe they let our brothers and sisters die
and when they did not decieve mothers as to the causes of death, they were deluding mothers that their babies were ‘gone straight to heaven’.
My mother died on Jan 7th and we never got to talk about her lost children and her pain. I am absolutely now determined to find out the whole truth. I will with the help of my daughters…strong for her and strong for me.
Sean be strong.
Sally Mulready
Its so sad that these tiny humans onlygot that out of life. So much pain has been caused by the dotrine forced on the whole nation by the roman church .In france the police arrested a women who had secret pregnancies’ she had killed 8 children but she was a regulier church goer. the local priest acted shocked but in a small place perhaps the fear of the church stoped her from using contrecption. So its a very primative way of seeing things. fear and panic must have been her normal way of life.
Seanie, thank you for sharing your memory, and sorry it was so upsetting for you, take comfort in knowing that the entire story and detail’s concerning the Catholic Church’s so called “Doctrine” , Again, highlight’s the failing,s of their man made rule’s and regulation’s on all matter’s relating to Children in their care, and the general population of the R/C/Church.
Your posting Seanie, reminded me of the fact that i had seen this word “DOCTRINE” on my Court order of detention, dated 1955, when at the Dublin Children’s court, the Judge sent me away to an Institution in Co Cork , and it stated on the order, that this place was a certified institution, and in accordance with the “Doctrine’s” of the Catholic church, i would receive the care , education and attention that would be managed by the resident religious order!
The extent of that so called care and attention, was Sexual, physical and mental abuse, starvation,intimidation, humiliation, and most of that down to the Religious, so , while i am not trying to detract from your sad experience Seanie, i feel it help’s to highlight another example of of the R/C/Church’s disgusting “Doctrine” which was indeed experienced by everyone who passed through these Gulag’s !
Keep Strong .
Jimmy
Read the item that is so filled with sadness and despair just click here http://www.paddydoyle.com/they-buried-our-baby-for-5-and-nothing-more-was-said/ Please do read it. Paddy.
The story to which Seanie refers can be read here http://www.paddydoyle.com/they-buried-our-baby-for-5-and-nothing-more-was-said/ Please take the time to read it. Paddy.
Sean, I feel your sadness and despair.There are no words that can be said to comfort you, my heart goes out to you
Paddy,
I thank you for bringing the truth to everyone’s notice, what damage a tear can do is a small price to pay, a river of tears have proceeded mine. again Paddy well done and please take all our support with you.
Seanie
Seanie, I’m sorry to read that you found the piece about such innocent children so distressing. I put it on the website because I felt people should know everything about the scandalous treatment of children in Ireland. I do hope you’re alright. Paddy.
The screen has blurred as I read this missive, I too have a brother stillborn, buried in the dark of night as I lay on the straw in the abandoned butcher shop in 10 Robert St, Limerick 1946, another dagger has been pulled slowly from this heart, a heart broken by the treatment of the doctrine of the church and the abuse of even the stillborns rights.
Seanie.