“We are meeting to deliberate them”, said Gyan Prakash Topno, spokesperson of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. However, single parents were allowed to adopt even according to the 2011 guidelines and there is no mention of gays and lesbians in either the 2011 or the 2015 guidelines.
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The Missionaries of Charity are closing their adoption centers in India owing to new government mandates that allow same-sex couples to adopt.
The order by India’s Central Adoption Resource Authority states that any prospective parent, regardless of marital status, can adopt a child, and it establishes a national mechanism to monitor adoptions.
There are estimated to be between 20 million and 30 million orphans in India, but just 4,000 children were adopted a year ago.
“What if the single parent who we give our baby [to] turns out to be gay or lesbian?” asked Sister Amala of Missionaries of Charity. “They have accepted this (end of adoption services) as the will of God”, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She started New York’s first AIDS hospice, and refrained from calling people “homosexual” but instead called them “friends of Jesus”.
“The bishops endorse the decision of the Missionaries of Charity”, he said, adding that Church officials plan to discuss the issue with lawyers to find out more about the consequences of the guidelines and ways to mitigate them. Mary Prema has said the sisters will be closing down the adoption centers in light of the recent mandates and regulations, which would force the sisters to act against their consciences.
“In case a child care institution is not able to work as per the guidelines, it has the option to transfer the children to other child care institutions which are working under the central government guidelines”.
“We told them there is a no reason to refuse a single parent who is eligible and fulfills all conditions in the guidelines”.
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The Missionaries of Charity, who were founded by Mother Teresa, will continue their care for the poor and abandoned in India. However, it is reiterated that the new guidelines, prepared after an elaborate consultation process, have to be followed by all child care institutions involved in the process of adoption, ” it said. “Why deny a good home to a child where there are such a large number of children in orphanages waiting to be adopted”.
