Shame: Catholic Nuns Stole Babies during Franco-era Spain

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One would think, armed with an objective source of truth and morality, this shit would not happen with catholics. This is what happens with religion rules the day....

Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena appeared before the judge and refused to testify, invoking her right to remain silent, Reuters reported.The aging Sisters of Charity nun was charged with kidnapping a newborn girl from a Madrid hospital in the 1980s.

A group of more than 1,000 families said she was part of a nationwide baby-snatching ring dating back four decades.The group, Anadir, said the ring involved hundreds of doctors, nurses, priests, nuns and midwives who schemed to convince poor or unwed mothers their babies had died at birth.

The babies were then sold to families looking to adopt, and the child's birth papers were doctored, the group said.

Lawyers say Catholic priests and nuns acted as middlemen, paying hospitals workers for babies and then selling them to desperate families.

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n the wake of several stories that appeared in the media in 2011 — revealing that during the Franco years a network of nuns and doctors at certain hospitals had taken babies from poor families or single mothers and given them to wealthy parents unable to conceive — the woman in question decided to try and trace her biological mother. The abductions are believed to have continued for several years after the death of Franco, in 1975.

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Cowards.

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Breaking News - The asshole nun whole stole babies from poor women and sold them to the sterile wealthy is now dead. Maybe god does have a conscience....

n 87-year-old Spanish nun accused of trafficking in newborns in the 1980s, a practice believed to date from the Franco dictatorship, has died, her convent said.

Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena in April last year was the first person to go before a judge over the "stolen babies" scandal.General Francisco Franco's regime allowed children to be taken from their parents on moral or ideological grounds, and the practice allegedly continued for profit for years after his death in 1975.

Asked about press reports that she had died on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul convent said: "Yes indeed, but we do not have more information."

Sister Maria had been scheduled to appear in court for questioning for a second time last week but the hearing was postponed indefinitely because of her poor health.

She was to be questioned over accusations that she took away twins born to a single mother in 1981 and sold them to another family. In April 2012 Sister Maria was also questioned by a judge investigating her role in the kidnapping of a newborn girl from a Madrid hospital three decades ago.

Campaign groups for suspected victims of the practice such as SOS Bebes Robados and Anadir say hundreds of thousands of newborns were stolen under Franco.They say some 1,500 court cases have been filed with prosecutors but that judges have shelved many cases on the grounds that they occurred too long ago.

Under a 1940 decree, the state was allowed to take children into custody if their "moral education" was at risk.The decree allowed the Franco dictatorship to take the children of jailed left-wing opponents from their mothers and have them placed with Roman Catholic religious orders or adopted by ideologically approved families to purge Spain of feared Marxist influence.

Some of the same doctors, nurses and officials who carried out the Franco-era policy are accused of continuing the practice illegally after Spain's return to democracy as a business that provided babies for cash to women unable to give birth.

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