Catholic Church under accusation in Belgium. According to what was revealed in the podcast "Kinderen van de Kerk" by the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, the Church sold around 30 thousand children without the knowledge of their mothers in a period of time ranging from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s.

According to the newspaper, pregnant and unmarried women were placed in Catholic institutions, where they suffered humiliation and even sexual abuse.

During childbirth, some were subjected to general anesthesia, while others had to wear a mask - all ways to prevent mothers from seeing their child, who was immediately removed after birth. Some women were even sterilized. Others were forced to sign a document giving up their child or were told it was stillborn.

The little ones were then sold for sums between 10,000 and 30,000 Belgian francs (approximately between 250 and 750 euros), but sometimes much more, to adoptive families. Unpreserved or destroyed documents make the reunification process extremely difficult today, explains Debby Mattys (57), who was given up for adoption by nuns and who spent over 20 years searching for her birth mother. “She was 18 when she had an unwanted pregnancy,” she told Het Laaste Nieuws.

(Unioneonline/ss)

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