Being poor should never be a life sentence

SEAN Brady, the head of the Roman Catholic church in Ireland is reported as having said that “Our (sic) children were sent to institutions either for poverty, or for petty larceny, or for simply absence from schools.”

Being poor was not, and is not a crime, at least not for some... because many Roman Catholic priests and nuns take a vow of poverty on entering their religious orders.

This adds a different perspective to the meaning of “relative” poverty.

Children, many of them only toddlers, who were sent to those institutions were taken away from their foster families or from the mothers’ care in mother and baby homes?

But, because the local health authorities were funding the foster care, or their stay at the homes, many children were charged with the constructed, trumped-up charge of “receiving alms”, ie, begging, found to be “guilty”, and sentenced as criminals, because their mothers had no choice but to fall on the mercy of the state.

It isn’t a case that they were begging when they were only little mites in their foster-homes, or in mother-and-baby institutions, they were merely exercising their right to life, which right is so precious to the Roman Catholic Church.

How wise and how fair were the judges, and how genuine were the “witnesses” to this “receiving of alms”?

Isn’t it interesting that ordinary folk called the institutions by means of their location, Artane, Letterfrack, Goldenbridge, Navan Road, etc... they wouldn’t sully the names of the saints after which the places were named.

Michele Savage

Glendale Park

Dublin 12