Bishops reflect on scandal of mother and baby homes

The mother and baby home scandal concealed wrongdoing and incriminated victims resulting in destroyed lives, distorted facts and the depersonalisation of individuals, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin has said.

In his sermon at the city’s Christ Church Cathedral on the eve of St Patrick’s Day, Archbishop Michael Jackson said the scandal did not speak “of saints and scholars” and that Irish society needed restoration while Churches stood in need of redemption.

Dr Jackson said this could not be achieved “without respect for the voice of the victim” and the forgiveness of the victim. The majority of Ireland’s mother and baby homes were run by Catholic religious orders, but some were operated by the Church of Ireland.

Elsewhere in his sermon, at a liturgy co-hosted with the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop Jackson highlighted how St Patrick was a trafficked slave who was taken by brute force from his home country and yet responded to “the call of the Irish by returning to the country where he was most deeply humiliated, betrayed and ill-used”.

Meanwhile in Waterford, the former president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, warned that this is “no time for silence” on racial and religious intolerance as there is “a tide of malice and misery to be turned”.

In her address to the congregation of Christ Church Cathedral ahead of relaunching its “Joy Bells”, Mrs McAleese said the people of Ireland had a chance to make the country “a light to the world” and an “example of tolerance and inclusion”. Hundreds of churches in Ireland, the UK and across the world joined in pealing their bells as a message of solidarity with refugees on Sunday.