Sir, – I am deeply grieved at the passing from this world of Mary Raftery. This wonderful person exposed terrible evils at the heart of civil and ecclesiastical entities, in Ireland. She gave me courage, after her States of Fearseries, as a priest, to publicly confront the Catholic Church, on its appalling record to date on child sexual abuse. May God reward her.
I don’t know if she was was a believer; but I know this, God, who champions the cause of the innocent, will be well pleased with her and will bring her safely home, to the joy and peace we all desire for her. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Mary Raftery’s commitment to recovering the story of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries is part of her impressive legacy of investigative journalism.
Twice in the past year she wrote opinion pieces on the need to bring about justice for Magdalene survivors. She identified the State’s moral obligation to redress historic injustices. She recognised families’ and society’s responsibility for these women – the daughters, sisters, aunts who were summarily disappeared: the invisible workforce who cleansed our dirty linen. And, Mary Raftery demanded that the four religious congregations account for the women in their “care”.
Back in August 2003, she wrote her influential exposé on the 1993 exhumation of 155 women’s remains at the High Park Magdalene Laundry, Drumcondra. That piece acted as a major catalyst in the rejuvenation of the Magdalene Memorial Committee and, ultimately, the formation of Justice for Magdalenes (JFM). Entitled “Restoring dignity to Magdalens,” the article offered a searing critique of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The issues raised – the discovery of an additional 22 bodies, the lack of death certificates for 54 women, the lack of names for 24 women, and significant discrepancies between the names listed on the exhumation licence issued by the Department of the Environment and the headstone subsequently erected at Glasnevin Cemetery where the bodies were cremated and reinterred – were alarming at the time; they are disconcerting still because as yet they remain unresolved.
These details would have gone unnoticed but for Mary Raftery’s particular brand of investigative journalism. She began the previous April by contacting the nuns seeking to clarify the aforementioned anomalies. She obtained copies of the original and revised exhumation orders, she tracked down death certificates for individual women, compared names on the Glasnevin gravestone with those on the exhumation licence. Ultimately, she submitted a list of 19 detailed questions for the attention of Sr Ann Marie Ryan at High Park.
To read those questions now is to fully appreciate Mary Raftery’s determination to get at the truth – she asked why so many deaths went unregistered, she asked why the order did not know the first and last names of numerous women who spent their lives working in the institution, she sought explanation for the discrepancies between the exhumation order and the headstone, she asked how much “did the exhumation, cremation, and reburial cost? Did you pay it all? Did the purchaser of the land pay any of it?” And, she asked why the order decided “to cremate the remains” and whether they were “aware of Canon Law 1176 in this regard?”
She concluded by referencing the fact that “a number of religious orders have already apologised for their role in the industrial schools” before asking “Has your order done so? Do you feel this is either appropriate or warranted?” Her questions would go unanswered.
Looking back, it matters less that Sr Ryan’s response (a brief statement issued the week the article was scheduled to appear) is notable only for its evasion. Rather, it seems important we recognise Mary Raftery’s work practices as worthy of emulation by everyone interested in better understanding Ireland’s recent past.
Her life’s work was fuelled by the conviction that all human beings deserve dignity and respect. She sought to restore dignity to Ireland’s Magdalene women and in doing so she inspired all of us in the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) campaign to do likewise. – Yours, etc,