Ireland has apologized for allowing the systematic abuse of women by Catholic nuns.
DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland ignored the mistreatment of thousands of women who were incarcerated within Catholic nun-operated laundries and must pay the survivors compensation, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said Tuesday in an emotional state apology for the decades of abuses in the so-called Magdalene Laundries."By any standards it was a cruel, pitiless Ireland, distinctly lacking in a quality of mercy," Kenny said, as dozens of former Magdalenes watched tearfully from parliament's public gallery overhead.(snip)A government-commissioned report published two weeks ago found that more than 10,000 women were consigned to the laundries after being branded "fallen" women, a euphemism for prostitutes, even though virtually none of them were — and instead were products of poverty, homelessness and dysfunctional families. More than a quarter were directly referred by public officials, such as judges or truancy officers, and all spent months or years in menial labor without access to education. Most did laundry for local hotels, hospitals and prisons, while others scrubbed floors or made rosary beads for the church's profit.
Each page of this church's history is riddled with horror. There is no light anywhere. As I told a Roman Catholic friend, "If there was a god at the heart of your church, these things wouldn't happen." But there is no god, and religion is just a fairytale. This fact makes the abuse more nightmarish, leaving only cruelty as the motivating force for depriving so many women of everything that matters in life. Every person involved in the running of this "laundry" should be imprisoned for the rest of his life.
Do you doubt that the Vatican was completely aware of what went on in this laundry? If there was still a living pope from those days, he would belong in a jail cell with the other perpetrators.
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