The Catholic church is ‘shocked’ at the hundreds of children buried at Tuam. Really?

Historian Catherine Corless was convinced that there — long-buried in a sewage system under the streets of a little town in Western Ireland — were the discarded remains of babies. Possibly hundreds of them.

For years, no one believed her.

Though, a state-appointed dig uncovered “significant quantities of human remains” at the site of St. Mary’s House — a home for unmarried mothers and children that had run from 1925 to 1961.

Excavators, who have been investigating, found a long underground structure that had been divided into 20 chambers, according to a statement.

Bodies, ranging from premature babies to three-year-olds, were found in 17 of the little rooms.

Subsequent tests suggest most of the remains date from the 1950s.

“This is very sad and disturbing news,” Katherine Zappone, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, said. “It was not unexpected as there were claims about human remains on the site over the last number of years. Up to now, we had rumors.”

Corless has been poking around the subject for years. Having grown up in the area, she remembers going to school with children from St. Mary’s — which had been owned by the state and run by the Sisters of Bon Secours, a Roman Catholic order.

In Ireland, a country known for its strict Catholicism, women who became pregnant outside of marriage were considered sinners and faced stigma and abuse.

Their children were also shunned, and Corless remembers her St. Mary’s peers appearing malnourished and being kept to one side of the classroom in a school.

She began her investigation of St. Mary’s in earnest when she discovered 796 death certificates for young children but was unable to find any burial records.

She carefully studied the grounds and old documents. The building itself had been torn down in the ’70s and replaced with housing development, but Corless was able to deduce that the children had been buried in an unofficial graveyard — possibly in the sewage treatment facilities.

“Nobody was listening locally or in authority, from the church or from the state,” Corless told The New York Times. “They said, ‘What’s the point?’ And that I shouldn’t view the past from today’s lenses.”

But the history of the homes began garnering international attention (due, in part, to the film “Philomena,” which was based on the true story of an Irish woman looking for the son who had been taken from her in a similar home), and the government of Ireland created the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in 2015.

The commission has been examining abuse allegations in 17 other similar institutions.

Corless said she hopes that the information uncovered by the investigations will help families affected find peace.

“I was thinking of all the survivors of the Tuam home who have brothers and sisters buried there and I knew in my heart and soul that they would be delighted with this announcement because they want a grave to visit,” she told the BBC.

Though the commission itself does not have the power to award compensation, the town’s archbishop has said the church will work with the families to identify remains and provide a “dignified re-interment” in official graves.

Newgrange: The Massive Irish Tomb That’s Older Than The Pyramids

Yep, 5,000 years. That’s older than Stonehenge. It’s older than the great Egyptian pyramids, too. And five millennia later, it hasn’t lost any of its wonders.

Newgrange was built around 3200 B.C. — hundreds of years before the Great Pyramid of Giza (2500 B.C.) and Stonehenge (3000 B.C.).

The massive hemispherical tomb is located in the Brú na Bóinne – Gaelic for the “palace” or “mansion” of the River Boyne. This 3-square mile area contains nearly a hundred ancient monuments, including two other large tombs, in addition, Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth.

Arriving at the iconic tomb is a wow-moment, to say the least. Standing outside the 80-meter mound, shored up with spiral-engraved kerbstones and topped with white Wicklow quartzite, a guide reveals the myths and history behind the monument.

Newgrange could have been designed as a tomb or a temple – in reality, nobody knows which. The truth will be shrouded in mystery forever.

Let there be light…

Once the scene has been set for you as a visitor, you’ll step inside the passage tomb itself, squeezing through standing stones carved with spiraling rock art and graffiti dating back to the 1800s (before Newgrange was taken into State care).

Ducking under beams of wood, you’ll emerge into the cool confines of a cruciform-shaped chamber like a stony igloo squirreled away within a hill.

This inner sanctum is where a lucky few (chosen by lottery from thousands of applicants annually) huddle together to witness the annual winter solstice illumination.

At this moment, when megalithic engineering and nature lock sensationally into sync, a shaft of light can be seen snaking 19 meters up the passageway, ultimately bathing the chamber in light. There are goosebumps, to say the least…

If you’re not one of the lucky ones, don’t fret. All visitors are treated to a simulated solstice, with an orange beam of light artificially showcasing the effect. It’s a tantalizing little taster – little wonder legend suggests that this was the site where mythological hero Cú Chulainn was Born.

Subterranean secrets…

Newgrange isn’t the only passage tomb in Ireland, of course. In fact, it’s not the only passage tomb at Brú na Bóinne. Together with nearby Knowth and Dowth, Newgrange has declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1993. Not bad for a site that once looked destined to become a quarry!

Not far away, near Oldcastle, County Meath, you’ll find a lesser-known cluster of passage tombs. Spotted around a handful of hills at Loughcrew are several cairns also dating from around 3,200BC. Because they’re more obscure and harder to get to, the Indiana Jones effect is all the more titillating.

If you get the sense that you’re being watched here, you may well be right. Some 60km away, atop of Slieve Gullian in County Armagh, the passage of another tomb points directly back towards Loughcrew.

Slieve Gullian’s two cairns lie on either side of a summit lake, with the southern tomb said to have a winter solstice alignment at sunset. On a good day, the views stretch as far as Dublin Bay.