Greystones Priest In Tuam Babies ‘Hoax’ Controversy

Tuam

n an interview with controversial journalist Gemma O’Doherty, a Greystones priest has expressed his long-held doubts about the Tuam babies scandal that made international headlines in October 2018.

The state has ordered an excavation later this year of the site at the former mother and baby home run by Catholic nuns, to verify the existence of a mass grave said to contain the remains of 796 babies.

Speaking to failed Presidential and European elections hopeful O’Doherty, Father Gerry Young said, “From the word go, I didn’t believe the story. I happened to have done a bit of study on how the church buried people. As soon as I heard this story about all these little bodies wrapped up on shelves, I thought, ‘Catacombs‘. We’ve always kept the dead with us.”

With O’Doherty having visited the Greystones home of Young in June to discuss St Brigid’s National School announcement that they were introducing a gender neutral uniform policy from September, recently, the Dublin archdiocesan priest conducted a live-stream interview with the crusading journalist. “There’s a whole generation of elitists in our country who clearly know nothing about the Catholic Church,” he stated. “People were ready to accept anything they were told – ‘the narrative‘, as they call it.

It was O’Doherty’s assertion that the claim of babies being buried at the former home run by Bon Secours nuns was “a hoax” that drew Young’s remarks. 

“The nuns were very wise,” he continued, describing his own visits to a home for unmarried mothers. “They said, ‘Father, the men that come in with the bouquet of flowers and the box of chocolates for the girl, they’re the married ones. The single ones who may be required to marry them hardly come at all’. So, there’s another side to this story that they were poor victims.

“Yeah, they were victims. They’re victims of not being formed in a grouping like a family or parish for proper sexual understanding, and they allowed themselves to be carried away.”

Catherine Corless, the award-winning journalist who broke the Tuam babies story, reacted to Young’s comments by stating, “The commission of inquiry and the government have declared the Tuam babies were indeed interred in a sewage tank, even providing evidence in photographs, albeit redacting the image of the little remains. These [photos] indicated remnants of excrement on the walls of the tank, evidence of sewage pipes in the chambers where the babies lie, evidence of rodents gnawing on bones. Yet, even at this stage, a Catholic priest would call this sewage tank a catacomb?”

Speaking on Young’s characterisation of unmarried mothers, Corless responded, “Words fail me, but these words come to mind: misinformed, mind-boggling and blaming women once again”.