ARCHBISHOP WAS AWARE OF ILLEGAL ADOPTIONS
THE former Archbishop of Dublin was fully aware that an adoption agency was illegally registering children, the Irish Daily Mail can reveal.
A series of letters reveal how Church leaders were informed in advance of plans by St Patrick’s Guild Adoption Agency to register children by hiding their past.
They did so to save adopting families from the pain of telling their children that they were adopted. The documents uncovered earlier this year shed light on the adoption pathway thousands of children took through St Patrick’s Guild adoption agency.
In one letter dated May 10, 1951, Sister Frances Elizabeth wrote to Reverend Cecil Mangan at the then Dublin Archbishop’s house on headed paper saying that the birth mothers were having to pay big fees in the nursing homes and that they needed help.
‘It is, indeed, a truly desperate situation,’ she said, urging that the children be given a permanent home as soon as possible.
‘The mothers are paying big fees (in some cases exorbitant ones) in Nursing Homes and each case has some special feature which makes it imperative that speedy relief should be given.
‘Yet we have not a single vacancy either at Temple Hill or with a foster mother. These 12 girls were promised help long ago. Their reputation and the reputation of their families is at stake.’
Without foster mothers, the agency would have to change birth certs to encourage adopting families to take in the children. The Adoption Act 1952 was implemented a year later and meant that any child who was adopted had to be registered with the then Adoption Board.