The Philippine Online Chronicles

Rumors have flared up again that Hollywood power couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are looking for a Filipino baby to add to their multinational brood, following a widely-circulated tweet suggesting they had approached a Manila orphanage for a possible adoption.

The rumor came up when Twitter user @Harold_Geronimo tweeted on February 28, “Confirmed: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt inquired about possible adoption of a Filipino child from Hospicio de San Jose in Manila.” The same message was re-tweeted by other users, among them broadcast journalist @Karen_Davila, and was later circulated by tabloids and bloggers.

When asked for confirmation, Geronimo said that the information was only about an inquiry and was in no way an indication that further steps had been made. He added that he was assured that all adoption inquiries made to the institution are confidential.

Geronimo has participated in outreach programs at Hospicio de San Jose but is not affiliated with it.

The Manila Bulletin says that earlier reports from British tabloid Daily Mail suggested that Jolie and Pitt were seeking to adopt a child from Haiti.

These were later refuted by Jolie’s spokesperson who said on February 11, “There is no truth to these rumours. Rather, Ms Jolie is focused on enhancing the welfare and legal protection of children within Haiti. As such, she has been meeting with government of Haiti officials, Haitian legal experts and non-governmental organizations regarding a new initiative of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.”

Rumors that Jolie and Pitt were seeking a Filipino child first arose in April 2009 when the couple was reported by the Daily Mail to have visited the Philippines to inquire about adopting a child.

According to the magazine’s website, Jolie “took time off from the set of her latest film, Salt, to travel to Manila with the intention of adding to her rainbow family.”

Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) general manager Alfonso Cusi, however, denied that the celebrity couple had set foot in the country.

“I have checked with all our offices coordinating VIP arrivals, as well as with the Bureau of Immigration. Sorry to disappoint the fans, but they (Jolie and Pitt) did not come to the Philippines at all,” he told the Inquirer.

The Inter-Country Adoption Board (ICAB) added that it has yet to receive an inquiry or an application from the Jolie-Pitt couple to adopt a Filipino baby.

Jolie and Pitt currently have six children, three of whom were adopted (Maddox, age nine, was adopted from Cambodia in 2002; Zahara, six, from Ethiopia in 2005; and Pax, seven, from Vietnam in 2007), and three are their own biological children (four-year-old Shiloh and two-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne).