San Francisco, Calif., Feb 7, 2007 / 17:25 pm

Speaking to a local radio station on Sunday, San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer said he is “really very happy” about a compromise plan that makes it possible for Catholic Charities adoption workers in his archdiocese to refer homosexual couples to adopt children.

Wednesday, the California Catholic Daily transcribed an on-air interview the archbishop gave to San Francisco’s KCBS, in which the Niederaruer lauded a plan that sees Catholic Charities employees working for a subsidiary of Family Builders by Adoption, an agency which provides adoptions to homosexual couples.

Asked his opinion of the agreement between Catholic Charities and Family Builders by Adoption, the archbishop commented that although Catholic adoption agencies could not remain open due to state law, “I’m really very happy with the decision made by the Catholic Charities CEO,” which, “was to work with the program on the Internet for finding homes for children, posting their pictures and being able to guide people who would be interested in this particular child to an adoption agency which could handle the situation.”

Catholic Charities San Francisco made the decision to close its adoption services after receiving clarification from the Vatican that Catholic organizations should not take part in the adoption of children to homosexual couples.  However, rather than removing itself completely from the adoption business, as its counterpart in Boston did a few months earlier, Catholic Charities San Francisco struck an agreement to pay workers who would labor for California Kids Connection, a web-referral service for the pro-homosexual-adoption Family Builders.

The archbishop said he respected the opinion of “those within the Church…who feel that even that is too much of an involvement, but I believe we have examined what we’re doing and vetted it very carefully, and what we’re really doing is putting potential adoptive parents in touch with adoption agencies that can help them.”

“The most important person in the adoption is the child,” Niederauer also said. “Important as it is for couples to be able to adopt a child if they want to, it’s most important of all that the child have a home.”

The archbishop noted that the Church’s teaching is that the child should have a mother and a father.