Sometimes a radio show is so compelling, so extraordinary, that picking one highlight is an extremely difficult task. Today’s Liveline was one of those shows. So even more so than usual, we would urge readers to go to the link below and listen back in full, if you have the time. It will be illuminating, compelling, disturbing, uplifting, all in the course of just over an hour.

But in the meantime, let’s focus on this exchange, between Father Paul Churchill, whose father spent 13 years as a child at the Bon Secours Sisters home in Tuam, up until the year 1938, and Catherine Corless, the local historian whose diligent and forensic work into the home, and the children who lived and died there, has dominated recent headlines.

“I just wonder if we are talking about the same place. All I can say is this. The evidence my father left us with, the impression he left us with, and the impression that the others who were in the home at the time with my father, some of whom I spoke to recently, have always given a good impression.”

Father Paul Churchill’s father died 10 years ago, but his memories of the place were uniformly positive and, he insists, the recent publicity has hurt who he regards as diligent and caring nuns who ran the home.

But Catherine Corless was adamant that her conversations with previous residents were utterly different.

“Most of them were fostered out, but when the fostering didn’t work out, they were sent back to the home. I have spoken to those, and all I hear is hunger and cold… You would want to hear the hundreds of people who have contacted me. The hurt they have gone through all their lives, because of misery they suffered in that home.”

Father Paul Churchill has also taken issue with how the story has been treated in the media. And in that respect, Joe brought to the attention of Father Paul various writings he has published, including a blog post he wrote in 2014, when the story originally broke. Part of the blog post went as follows. “When something so contrary to the truth is portrayed in the media. I can think of only one source of this lie. I’ll call it as Pope Francis would: the devil.”

To listen to Father Paul Churchill’s response, and the exchange in full with Catherine Corless, click here.