Children of the Ash Heap

In the Roman Empire, unwanted newborns were carried to the city dump and left on mounds of ash and refuse. Romans called the practice "exposure" — a clinical word for abandonment. These infants had no names, no families, no futures. The law treated them as non-persons. But early Christians did something the empire could not comprehend. They walked to those ash heaps before dawn and gathered crying babies into their arms.…