The home, which was run by an order of Catholic nuns and closed in 1961, was one of many such institutions that housed tens of thousands of orphans and unmarried pregnant women who were forced to give up their children throughout much of the 20th century.
In 2014, historian Catherine Corless tracked down death certificates for nearly 800 children who died at the home in Tuam between the 1920s and 1961 — but could only find a burial record for one child.
I asked that question when I was a kid in catechism class. To the credit of the Dominican brother who was teaching the class, he wasn’t reactive, but later had a side-talk with me about demanding logical consistency from allegory. But that realization planted the seed that eventually led to my abandoning religion.