Guatemala City, Guatemala, Dec 11, 2007 / 12:44 pm (CNA).- The president of the Bishops’ Conference of Guatemala, Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini, called on the country’s Congress this week to approve a law on adoptions “that protects the rights of the child and strongly confronts the excesses and immoral attitudes of those who have made a business out of adoption.”

“The people of Guatemala and the Catholic Church hope and desire that the Congress approves this law on adoptions on December 11,” the bishop said in a statement.

He urged Congress to “fulfill its historic responsibility with regard to this issue,” and he noted that in Guatemala, the adoption of children is “a commercial activity that has become very lucrative, thus stripping it of the nobility of giving an abandoned, indigenous, handicapped or unwanted child to a family and a stable home.”

Babies are being treated as “simple merchandise that can be bought and sold,” the bishop decried.  This is just another symptom of the “profound crisis of human and moral values” that is affecting Guatemala, he said.

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