As Izidor speaks, the hearing room in Bucharest is silent. He finishes his statement — but he is not done. Noticing that the senator who introduced the bill, and his representatives, have wandered in and out of the room during the three hours of testimony, he turns his anger on them.

“Where were you?” he asks the senator. “It’s pretty embarrassing to see your staff walk out in the middle of the meeting.” The senator, abashed, says he had other matters to attend to.

Afterward, Izidor has a sinking feeling. And indeed, despite his testimony and despite encouragement by the European Parliament for member states to allow international adoption (most already do), Romania’s Senatea few weeks later upholds the adoption ban 62-to-40.

Ramona Popa, a spokeswoman for the government’s Romanian Office for Adoptions, says that although the office does not oppose international adoptions in theory, it opposes the bill because it does not do enough to rectify earlier problems with the process.

Since Izidor last visited Romania, she says, the government has closed down large institutions, and a law that took effect in 2005 mandates that children in facilities receive the services of psychologists and social workers.

“Now there are smaller houses that respect the children’s rights,” Popa says. “If he will come again, of course he will see that there are other conditions.”

Izidor says that is hard to believe. He says he has seen recent documentary evidence showing conditions are still dire.

But the closeness of November’s Senate vote energizes him. Many ordinary Romanians are still unaware of how bad conditions are in institutions, he says. Perhaps by speaking to them directly, in a series of lectures, he can inspire in them a desire for change. The bill is now with Romania’s Chamber of Deputies, the country’ s other parliamentary body, with more hearings to come, and another vote.

Izidor even has a dream — farfetched, he concedes — of seeing the Sighetu institution reopened as an educational facility that would teach abandoned children how to function in the outside world as adults. Above all, he says, “It would have open doors, so people could walk in and out freely.”