An ITV documentary filmed in Great Britain about mothers, now around retirement age, who were pressured to give up their babies for adoption to Catholic, Anglican and Salvation Army churches, includes an apology by the Roman Catholic Church.
Outrage over decades of forced adoption has rocked the Catholic Church in Ireland but it turns out that this was going on in Great Britain too.
The film includes a statement by the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who said that the Church acknowledged the “grief and pain” caused to young unmarried women by the actions of agencies linked to the Catholic Church.
He offered an apology to mothers who were pressured into handing their babies over for adoption in the decades after the Second World War, and attributed the adoption agencies practices to “the social values at that time that were sometimes lacking in care and sensitivity.”
Lawyers are calling for the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to consider a public inquiry into the issue.