A special Ghost Month ritual was performed in Cork’s largest Famine burial ground
It’s the final resting place for around 30,000 souls.
And this week, a group of local Buddhists spent seven days in the All Saints Cemetery on Carr’s Hill as a mark of respect to the victims of the Irish Famine buried there.
In Chinese culture, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month, during which ghosts and spirits, including those of deceased ancestors, are honoured.
The monks and nuns of the Hanmi Buddhist Association visited the site, known locally as ‘The Pauper’s Graveyard’, to perform a seven-day traditional Buddhist ritual.
In the months of February to June 1847 alone, 2,260 famine victims from the Workhouse on Douglas Road (now St Finbarr’s Hospital) were laid to rest in these grounds.
The late Jack Sorensen, a taxi driver in Cork, erected a cross to honour the famine dead back in 1958, which is still located on the graveyard site.
