New gay rights law are forcing the Church to pull out of adoption services in every diocese in Wales.The St David's Children's Society, which covers the three Welsh dioceses of Cardiff, Menevia and Wrexham, will cut ties with the bishops and become an independent charity so it can comply with the Sexual Orientation Regulations.
It is the third largest of the 13 Catholic adoption agencies in England and Wales and finds new families for about 35 children a year - about 14 per cent of all cases in Wales.Its loss will be a massive blow to the Church, which founded the society in 1947.
But trustees argue that the Government has given them no choice but to sever links with the dioceses if the agency is to avoid closure.
They have just three months to comply with the law, which makes it illegal for adoption agencies to turn away same-sex couples as possible adoptive and foster parents. Gerry Cooney, the director of St David's, said: "The situation is one in which really we have to either fully comply with the regulations or to close. We are in the process of fully complying with the regulations. That will mean separation from the dioceses. We are aiming to be fully compliant in the near future.'
He added: "It is a very sensitive issue and a very difficult issue. The bishops have said that it is a situation not of their making and there have been no easy decisions taken at this time."
St David's is the oldest adoption agency in Wales and has placed more than 2,000 children with new families in its 60-year history. It will become the fifth Catholic adoption agency to break from the control of the bishops in order to stay open. The first to go was the St Francis Children's Society in Northampton in May, followed a fortnight later by the Catholic Children's Society of the Nottingham diocese.
A month later the country's largest Catholic adoption agency - the Catholic Children's Society jointly covering the dioceses of Southwark, Portsmouth and Arundel and Brighton - also decided to cut its connections with the bishops. Then, in July, the trustees of Catholic Caring Services of the Lancaster diocese voted 6-1 to reject the pleas of Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue to remain within the control of the Church.
Only one agency, the Catholic Children's Rescue Society, of the Salford diocese, has so far pulled out of adoption altogether. The Catholic Children's Society in Westminster archdiocese is hoping to remain within the control of the Church and to challenge the laws in court if necessary. The Father Hudson's Society of the Archdiocese of Birmingham and the Nugent Care Society of the Archdiocese of Liverpool - the second largest Catholic adoption agency - are understood also to be considering this course. Other adoption agencies are still reviewing their options.
Ann Widdecombe, former Tory Minister and convert to Catholicism, said the new law made it "inevitable" that the agencies would find themselves in crisis.She said: "It is ludicrous. No one is benefiting from this law. Homosexual couples could already adopt, they just couldn't adopt through Fr O'Flaherty. The very difficult placements the Catholic Church was so good at are at risk of being lost and it will be those children who depend most upon this service who are going to suffer."
She added that the blame for the problems of the adoption agencies lay with Ministers and MPs who supported the regulations and not the bishops, who, she said, had fought a brave and vigorous public campaign to retain their agencies.
Miss Widdecombe said the Government should have instantly granted the agencies an exemption if it had sincerely wanted them to continue to find new families for some of the 4,000 children in care homes.
However Neil Addison, a barrister and an expert on religious hatred law, said he was "disappointed" that most Catholic agencies were "giving in" by failing to challenge the regulations in the courts.
"I would also question legally the right of Catholic agencies to stop being Catholic charities because they have charity money given to be used for Catholic purposes," he added. "They can't just unilaterally change that."
The new rules, introduced under the 2006 Equality Act, were forced through Parliament last year in the face of opposition from religious leaders.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor had warned the Cabinet that the bishops could lose their agencies if the laws came into force and Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, gave the charities until New Year's Day 2009 to find a solution.
One Catholic adoption agency chief executive later described the situation as the "darkest hour in 150 years of Catholic social work in Britain".
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