Chile's Catholic Church Says Priest Stole Babies for Adoption

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Chile's Catholic Church Says Priest Stole Babies for Adoption
By Reuters
Filed: 8/12/14 at 5:07 PM

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile's Catholic church confirmed on Tuesday that a priest was instrumental in the forced adoption of at least two babies without the knowledge of their mothers, and had also maintained an "inappropriate relationship" with one mother.

Gerardo Joannon is being investigated judicially for illegally handing over an undetermined number of babies for adoption in the 1970s and 1980s, born to single mothers who were told the infants had died.

The priest has said the babies were removed mainly from middle-class women due to the stigma attached to unmarried mothers at that time in Chile's Catholic society.

"The preliminary investigation has established the truth of the accusations...he always knew that both babies did not die," said Alex Vigueras, a regional church head who is in charge of the probe into Joannon.

Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/chiles-catholic-church-says-priest-stole-babies-adoption-264216

[PADemD]

1. How much money did The Church receive for arranging the adoptions?

[47of74]

2. Ahem

[LuckyLib]

3. He wouldn't be the first. Priests and doctors in Latin America have been at the

business of adoption for centuries.

[secondwind]

4. wow.. and they aren't going to do anything about this.. because too much time

has passed?

BULLSHIT

[theHandpuppet]

5. Yep. I recently posted about this scandal

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024969538

Edited to add some text from that OP:

Chile: Catholic priests investigated over stolen babies
Church leaders admit to knowing about scheme in which single mothers were pressured to give up their newborns for adoption
Jonathan Franklin in Santiago
theguardian.com, Thursday 15 May 2014

The Catholic church in Chile is under investigation over allegations that priests played a central role in a network that stole newborn babies from single mothers.

Police investigators are now probing dozens of cases in which unmarried women who became pregnant were pressured by priests to give up their child for adoption. Those who refused were anesthetized during delivery and, upon awakening, told that the child had died. The healthy babies were hidden from their biological mothers and given away in order to be raised by married couples in "traditional" Catholic families.

Church leaders now admit they have known about the network for at least 10 years. Unlike in Spain and Argentina, where babies were stolen from families considered to be too poor or too subversive to raise the children well, the motivation in Chile was to shield the reputations of well-off families from the social stigma of unmarried motherhood.

Most of the cases now being investigated date from the 1970s and 1980s, but some were reported in 2005....

MORE at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/chile-catholic-priests-investigated-stolen-babies