The editor of the Galway Advertiser, Declan Varley has won an international award for editorial writing.
The prestigious Golden Quill Award is presented annually by the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors for what is deemed to be the finest newspaper editorial across the globe.
Mr Varley is the first editor from outside North America to win the award since it was initiated in 1961.
The elaborately designed Golden Quill trophy was presented at the Society’s conference in Cardiff at the weekend.
The winning editorial was published in the Galway Advertiser last year, as the long-awaited excavation got under way at the former Tuam Mother and Baby Home site. The article called for dignity and respect in honouring those whose remains may be recovered.
Declan Varley is currently the longest-serving newspaper editor in Ireland having succeeded the late Ronnie O’Gorman as editor of the Advertiser in 2000.
The judge 0f the Golden Quill award, former Press Association editor Jonathan Grun said that the editorial combined rigorous journalism with poignantly lyrical language.
“Declan Varley’s editorial comment on the exhumation of 796 children interred in mass graves without names, markers or dignity, at a former Mother and Baby Home in County Galway, was brilliant journalism at its best. For decades, the town of Tuam and the whole of Ireland had nursed a dark secret about the fate of the children and their mothers.
“In a piece that combined rigourous journalism with poignantly lyrical language, Declan said that ‘these children were denied the ordinary miracles of life: scraped knees, first loves, grey hairs. But now, they will be remembered. They will be named. They will be mourned properly. And maybe, just maybe, the country that forgot them can finally begin to remember what it means to be humane. Let us walk gently into this process. Let us whisper their names with care. Let us pass the stories, like dry cake and warm tea, from hand to hand, so they may never be forgotten again.”
Accepting the award in Cardiff on Saturday night, Declan Varley said that to receive recognition from fellow editors is a very special honour.
“We all know that editorial writing is often the loneliest part of journalism. It asks us not simply to report events, but to weigh them, to challenge them, to interpret them and, at times, to give voice to those people in our communities who have none.
“I accept this award on behalf of everyone at the Galway Advertiser. While one person may write an editorial, no editorial exists in isolation. It grows from the work of reporters, photographers, production staff, advertising and classified colleagues and, above all, from the trust our readers place in us every week.
“The Tuam exhumations were never simply about uncovering remains. It was about uncovering truth. It was about acknowledging lives that had been forgotten for far too long.
“It was about restoring dignity to children who had been denied it. For decades, those children were spoken of as numbers. Yet they were never numbers. They were sons and daughters. They had names, families, hopes and futures that were never allowed to unfold.
“When a society finally chooses to remember those it once chose to forget, something remarkable happens. We do not merely recover history; we recover part of our own humanity.
“That was the heart of the editorial,” he concluded.
The full editorial is republished below:
Tuam excavations an act of humanity and delicacy
First published on June 12, 2025
Next week, beneath the quiet skies of Tuam, shovels will meet soil. It will be no ordinary act of excavation—it will be an act of love, of memory, of finally listening to voices long silenced. The ground at the former Mother and Baby Home, where 796 children were interred without names, markers, or dignity, will open not only to archaeologists, but to a nation’s grief.
These were not faceless children. They were Martins and Ellens, Sarahs and Peters. Names that call to mind corner-shop owners, schoolteachers, local GAA coaches, kind uncles, charming aunts—people with layers, flaws, stories. Not the names of infants. Names full of weight and expectation. They sound like lives half-glimpsed, lives that never got the chance to fill their names with meaning.
These children should now be old. Their names should be murmured softly on local radio, mourned respectfully on rip.ie, whispered about over ham sandwiches and strong tea in living rooms cleared for the wake. They should be remembered fondly or fiercely—community pillars, stubborn neighbours, generous souls. Instead, they were left beneath the surface of a repurposed septic tank, voiceless in death as they were in life.
What begins next week is not just forensic science. It is a national reckoning. For nearly a century, the voices of these children were muffled under a shame we tried too hard to ignore. But now, with the slow and sacred work of exhumation, we begin the long-overdue process of honouring them. The soil will yield more than remains—it will give us back their stories.
To the families who have waited, sometimes without hope, for this moment: this is for you. To the mothers who were told to forget, and the siblings who never knew they had another name in their family tree: this is for you. May the act of remembering be a balm, however small, for wounds long left open.
To the teams of archaeologists, anthropologists, technicians and the newly established Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention: we entrust you with a task of enormous delicacy and humanity. You are caretakers of our lost children. Your work is not just technical—it is spiritual, emotional. You are lifting them out of the dark, into light.
And at the centre of this story, there is a woman who refused to look away. Catherine Corless. A local historian who gave 796 children back their names, and with those names, their personhood. What she did was beyond remarkable—it was an act of pure moral clarity. Let there be a scholarship in her name, a perpetual honour for the quiet, determined work of telling the truth. She showed us that history is not a relic—it is a responsibility.
The town of Tuam, so rich in story, music, and my own memory, now holds within it both heartbreak and hope.
These children were denied the ordinary miracles of life: scraped knees, first loves, grey hairs. But now, they will be remembered. They will be named. They will be mourned properly. And maybe, just maybe, the country that forgot them can finally begin to remember what it means to be humane.
Let us walk gently into this process. Let us whisper their names with care. Let us pass the stories, like dry cake and warm tea, from hand to hand, so they may never be forgotten again.
Let the work begin.
