News
2006-08-04
San Francisco's
Catholic Charities develops plan to allow adoptions by
gays
The social
services arm of the archdiocese of San Francisco announced
Wednesday that it has foun
The social
services arm of the archdiocese of San Francisco announced
Wednesday that it has found a way to help connect
hard-to-place children with welcoming parents, gay or
straight, without violating the Catholic Church's
views on homosexuality. By partnering with another adoption
service, San Francisco's Catholic Charities will increase
the number of children that find homes without it
having to directly place kids with same-sex couples,
said the agency's executive director, Brian Cahill.
California Kids Connection, a statewide adoption
exchange set up by the Oakland-based nonprofit Family
Builders by Adoption, features information about 500
children on a Web site that prospective parents can browse.
Workers at the adoption service had to limit the number of
children they work with because of limited staffing,
but with the help of three Catholic Charities
employees who will be placed there, they'll be able to
handle more cases, said San Francisco archbishop George Niederauer.
The Catholic Charities workers will refer
prospective parents to agencies that can complete the
adoption proceedings, Niederauer said. "That's where
we'll help," he said. "What we won't be doing...is
placement in homes. We can't be involved in that anymore."
Before Wednesday's announcement, Catholic
Charities in San Francisco completed an average of 25
adoptions, including one to same-sex couples, per
year, Cahill said. The search for an alternative approach
began about five months ago, when Niederauer told
Catholic Charities that placing children in same-sex
households went against church teachings.
He asked the agency, which got its start helping
children orphaned by San Francisco's devastating 1906
earthquake, to find a way to continue to serve orphans
without violating Catholic views. The new program will
allow it to help more of the approximately 82,000 children
in California's foster care system than they do now,
Cahill said.
Boston's Catholic Charities opted out of the
controversy by shutting down its adoption program
entirely, but Cahill said that was not an acceptable
alternative in San Francisco. "I'm not going to downplay the
fact the church told us to stop placing children in
same-sex homes," he said. "But we're committed to our
mission. We started off as an adoption agency. Why
would we give that up?" (AP)
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