
07/12/2026: The Vatican's Orphans, Sealand, Christopher Nolan
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About this episode
From 1950 to 1970, the Vatican sent thousands of Italian children to eager American Catholics for adoption. The children entered the United States on orphan visas. The trouble was most of the children were not orphans. They were the children of unwed mothers, many of whom were alive and searching for their children. How the Vatican got into the orphan business is the subject of The Price of Children. Bill Whitaker speaks to author Maria Laurino and to American adoptees still struggling with the decades of separation from their birth families. Heather Abbott is the producer.Correspondent Jon Wertheim journeys by boat (and winch) into the world’s smallest—and unlikeliest—state: the…