Spain's Stolen Babies - NIÑOS ROBADOS

I watched a documentary this morning regarding "Ninos Robados" or the "Stolen Children" of Spain.

Sell me?

This documentary from the British Broadcasting Corporation exposed a decade long government cover-up in Spain.  It is estimated that between 1950 and the early 1980's, 300,000 babies were taken from parents deemed "undesirable" and sold to loyalists of Generalissimo Franco. 

The cover-up is also thought to have been orchestrated with the direct aid of the Catholic Church in Spain.

In this documentary, numerous people spoke up about finding out they were adopted and how much their adoptive parents paid to become their parents. 

There were huge amounts of money exchanged for these adoptions.  Much of this money was given to Spanish Medical clinics and their doctors.  Huge sums were also paid to Spanish priests and nuns who ran the social services departments who arranged adoptions in Spain. 

1971 - The woman in the nurse's cap has just bought this
child in Spain.  She is happy and so are the Nuns
who helped her to do this.  But 40 years later, is the child
happy that he was stolen from his mother?

Unmarried women had their newborns taken from them.  They were told the infant died.  When the mother asked to see the child's body, she was told that she couldn't.  It was out of the question.  It would make her ill. 

Thousands of couples who were legally married had their children taken from them.  

Sometimes actual graves were dug for these "dead infants" (who were actually sold), and when the graves have been dug up, a grave has stones in it, or it has a male infant body in place of a female one, or it has an adult arm in it, instead of the bones of an infant. 

God help us.  Is everything up for sale?  Do we sell infants to the highest bidder?

Shame on the Spanish Government for allowing this to happen in the first place. Where was this government?

Shame on the Catholic priests and nuns who participated in this mean-spirited, un-Christian and greedy scandal.  Would Jesus steal a child from his parents?

As a result of this all, many tens of thousands of Spanish citizens are looking for their biological parents, or their biological children.  Most of these searches for family will come to no definitive end.  Only God knows where their children or their parents are. Who can find them?  They are lost. 

Pray for all people who are abused by our governments, our religions and our bureaucratic systems which deprive us of basic human rights, such as the right to know who your parents are. 

God help us. Amen.