In the 1950s American Catholics were eager to adopt thousands of Italian children from an impoverished country. They thought they were saving orphans. They were wrong. Most of the children were not orphans. They were the children of unwed mothers who had been pressured into giving up their child by their families and a powerful church.

Today, thousands of American adoptees are still struggling to piece together their lost lives, decades after the Vatican's orphan program ended in 1970. Adoptee John Campitelli felt his entire life was based on a lie once he learned what had happened to him and his birth mother, Francesca. Campitelli is still angry at the church.