A mass grave that could hold up to nearly 800 infants and young children is being excavated on the grounds of the former home in Ireland run by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of nuns.

The grave was accidentally discovered by two boys a half century ago. But the true horror of the place was not known until a local historian began digging into the home’s history.

Exhumation begins

The burial site has forced Ireland and the Catholic Church to reckon with a legacy of having shunned unmarried mothers and separated them from their children left at the mercy of a cruel system.

How the mass grave was discovered

The backstory:

The home, which was 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

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