Sister Kuijpers and the Chilean adopted children: 'I just wanted to help, shouldn't that be possible?'

"I wanted to help people. You get that in your genes. We love children. My sister and I consciously chose a teaching job. So I just wanted to help, that should be possible, right?" Sister Gertrudis Kuijpers leaves no doubt about it. Motivated to do something for her fellow man, this Dutch nun ran a children's home in South America in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the less than rosy and poverty-stricken Chile of the 1970s – then under the rule of dictator Pinochet – adoption seems to be the method to offer many children a safe home. "Mother whore, father criminal," Gertrudis Kuijpers explains the often dreary situations. The sisters took care of the children and tried to place them at another address. And so Gertrudis gradually became a household name in Santiago and in the Netherlands.

Criticism

This was partly because she started her own home in 1976, called Las Palmas. A kind of sheltered home where mothers could live and work with their children. Children were admitted, went to school and received care and medication.

But criticism is gradually coming in as well. Is it all charity in Las Palmas? Was the Chilean children's home a beacon of hope or a transit point for children?

You will hear this in the first exciting episode of the Hart van Nederland podcast 'The Adoption Nun':