Priest criticises excavation of children's remains at Tuam mother and baby home

Darragh Mc Donagh

A priest and former diocesan secretary of Tuam has criticised the excavation of remains underway at the former mother and baby home in the town, describing the nuns who ran the institution as “outstanding”.

Excavation works began last month, intending to recover and forensically analyse the remains of nearly 800 infants buried at the site, many of whom are believed to have been interred in a disused septic tank.

A special body has been established by the government to oversee the project and ensure that the recovered human remains are memorialised and buried with respect and dignity.

Fr Brendan Kilcoyne, who served as secretary to the Archbishop of Tuam for over a decade, said “a fortune of money” was being spent on the excavation works despite the completion of a “first-class” government inquiry.

He said the works would take two years, during which time a “black mass” would take place in Tuam, peddling “black propaganda” about the history of the home.

Fr Kilcoyne said there was an “outrageous myth” that children at the institution had “met an untimely end through bad action”. He described the nuns who ran the home as “outstanding” and said he did not believe there was any “bad action”.

“We are now about to spend two years and a fortune of money excavating every single piece of human remains in an area where it was always known human remains were buried,” he said.

“We are going to have this liturgy. We’re going to have this black mass in Tuam that’s going to go on for two years, constantly peddling the same line, the same black propaganda, the black legend, the whole time.”

A “black mass” is a satanic ritual or a blasphemous ceremony mocking the Christian mass.

He claimed that the Church was being “shafted” by the deliberate propagation of misinformation surrounding the history of the mother and baby home, and said the government inquiry had “largely exonerated” the nuns.

Appearing to question the decision to carry out excavation works in Tuam, Fr Kilcoyne asked whether anyone knew where “the 60,000 Irish children who have been murdered since abortion was brought in” were buried.

“Let’s dig them up,” he added.

Fr Kilcoyne, who also served as president of the local post-primary school in Tuam for five years, was speaking on his podcast, The Brendan Option.

He said an impression was being given in an “unscrupulous manner” that children died through bad action or criminal behaviour in Tuam, and that they were “deliberately buried in a septic tank”.