Catholic Church apologises to unmarried mums who were pressured to give up babies

I didn't have a chance to say goodbye

The head of the Catholic Church in Britain has apologised to young unmarried mothers who say they were pressured into giving up their babies for adoption in the years after the Second World War.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, said practices by adoption agencies acting in the name of the Catholic Church were "lacking in care and sensitivity", along with those of other religious and state organisations involved in adoption during that period.

We speak to Angela Patrick, who fell pregnant when she was 18 in 1963. As an unmarried woman she was told to leave her job in the city and made to have her baby in a "cold and unwelcoming" Catholic 'mother and baby' home. Once her son was born, he was taken away from her and she didn't see him again until he was a grown man of 30.

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