BRUSSELS (BELGIUM)
The Messenger [West Palm Beach FL]
December 21, 2023
By Nick Gallagher
The mothers were said to be anesthetized or covered with sheets during childbirth and barred from ever setting eyes on their own babies
The Belgian Catholic Church is accused of taking at least 30,000 babies from unwed mothers and handing them off to adoptive parents in exchange for money over the course of three decades.
The Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws revealed the extent of the alleged scheme, which spanned from at least the 1950s into the 1980s.
Sent by their parents, the young women were in some cases anesthetized or covered with sheets during childbirth and were barred from ever setting eyes on their own babies, the paper reported.
During pregnancy, the mothers allegedly lived and worked in homes operated by nuns. Some victims said they had been subjected to sexual humiliation and violence, including forced sterilization.
The church allegedly never disclosed to the mothers that it had “sold” each baby to married couples for between $275 and $825.
When news of the scandal first broke in 2015, Belgian bishops apologized and agreed to participate in an inquiry that would assess the scale of the operation.
“That apology, that compassion and complete willingness still apply today,” the bishops said in a statement, per London-based Catholic journal The Tablet.
But critics have argued the church never followed through with its promise to investigate how the scandal unfolded — and who might be responsible.
Conference spokesman Father Tommy Scholtes rejected the idea that adoptive parents had to purchase children from the church, arguing instead that they had willingly “contributed financially to the functioning of the religious communities.”
The Belgian parliament vowed to investigate the affair after Flemish MP Vngvild Ingels, 43, said that she was among the babies who were whisked away from their mothers during childbirth.
She said she still has no idea who her biological parents might be because she was only ever told she was “born in Dunkirk of unknown descent” in 1979.
The Belgian government, which gives funding to the Catholic Church and other religious institutions, was already looking into reports of widespread sexual abuse inside the church after a documentary series featuring testimonies from victims aired earlier this year.
Pope Francis is set to visit Belgium sometime next month — the first time a pope has entered the country since 1995 — but it wasn’t immediately clear whether he plans to discuss the adoption and sexual abuse scandals during the trip.