Only one stone wall remains of the old mother and baby home in this town, but it has cast a shadow over all of Ireland.
A mass grave that could hold up to nearly 800 infants and young children — some of it in a defunct septic tank — is being excavated on the grounds of the former home run by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of nuns.
The burial site has forced Ireland and the Catholic Church — long central to its identity — to reckon with a legacy of having shunned unmarried mothers and separated them from their children left at the mercy of a cruel system.
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Work begins on the excavation of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home site on June 16,
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