Do You Know What It Isnt
Catholic sisters are frequently the heroes in these real-life tragedies. But as well many of us accept no thought what's going on.
I recently had a conversation with a friend, a well-informed globe traveller, about man trafficking. I told him about my experience with the Arise Foundation, seeing cases of young women (and some men) who are forced into sexual slavery, and that the numbers –- both in terms people and profits – were huge.
"I thought that was but in the movies," he said. "Yous know, Liam Neeson." He was referring to a terrifying motion picture, Taken, in which Neeson plays a former CIA operative, the male parent of a young woman who's been abducted in Paris so she can be trafficked.
Unfortunately, homo trafficking is not just a topic for smashing action films. Information technology'due south all likewise existent, and happening all over the world. While it isn't surprising that my acquaintance wasn't enlightened of this harrowing reality, it is unfortunate. Abolishing trafficking and slavery will simply happen when ordinary people know what's going on, often right in their own neighborhoods.
Frontline heroes
While non many people are aware of the extent of modernistic slavery, even fewer know that Catholic sisters are doing more than any other grouping globally to stop information technology. As is frequently the example with Catholic sisters, they're on the forepart lines.
Ane religious sister who experienced slavery firsthand was St. Josephine Bakhita, the patroness of victims of slavery and trafficking. St. Josephine was a Sudanese woman, abducted as a young girl in the late 1800s and forced to work as a slave. She was somewhen brought to Italy and freed. She became a Christian and entered religious life with the Canossian Sisters.
St. Josephine was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1992 and made a saint in the twelvemonth 2000. The suffering she endured as a slave was unimaginable. One possessor cutting her some 114 times, and she bore those scars for life.
The distressing fact is that slavery has non been abolished, and cases every bit every bit brutal as St. Josephine'south are happening all over the globe. Pope Francis has asked Catholics to pray to her intercession for an finish to what he calls a scourge.
From kindergarteners to prostitutes
Indeed it is a scourge, a global racket destroying the dignity of millions of people. Victims can range from children who should be in kindergarten, working in brick kilns in Islamic republic of pakistan; to Filipino maids in the Gulf states who are not allowed out of their workplace; to young Nigerian and Eastern European women forced into prostitution on the streets of Rome, Madrid and Paris. They could besides be workers in boom salons in Chicago, New York, or Miami.
I first learned about modernistic slavery while living in Rome, and was lucky enough to exist there when Josephine Bakhita was beatified. Through the Ascend Foundation, I got to know the incredible work that Cosmic sisters are doing in this sphere. Ascend, founded in 2015, is a pocket-size NGO punching well above its weight. It helps frontline groups, and especially networks of sisters, in fighting the root causes of slavery today: farthermost poverty and unemployment.
While many religious sisters gear up safe houses for trafficked women after they have been rescued, the focus of Arise is on prevention, tackling the problem at its roots. Awareness is only the start: education, skills training and job creation are key.
Similar much of the humanitarian service the Church provides around the world, the piece of work of the sisters in this area passes without much fanfare. But information technology's essential and frequently life-changing. Few things are more life-irresolute than freedom, and Catholic sisters are working amend than whatever other group — more quietly, more effectively, and more cheaply –- to put an end to slavery.
The largest humanitarian organization in the world
Cosmic sisters make up an amazing network. They come from unlike orders and have dissimilar missions, merely if you put them together they form the largest humanitarian organisation in the world. Their anti-slavery piece of work takes identify across the globe. The cases I know best are those where Arise is most active: Bharat, the Philippines, Nigeria and Albania – all countries in which traffickers prey on the drastic poverty of so many people.
The example of Sr. Jessy Maria, a Bethany sister based in Jharkhand, a state of eastern India, is one that should make whatsoever Catholic proud. Sr. Jessy, 50, has spent the last xxx years working to improve the lives of people in the nearly remote communities of the expanse.
Working in places where virtually of the population is illiterate and living below the poverty line, Sr. Jessy and her team of sisters accept put a major paring in the nefarious piece of work of traffickers, who come to villages posing as recruiters with offers of jobs in the big cities. The "jobs" that are promised plow out to be different forms of exploitation and enslavement. Over the past several years the sisters have moved through villages using banners and street plays to inform people most these realities and how to avoid them.
It works. Sisters are embedded in the communities they live in. They're close to the people, and they're trusted. Not many NGOs tin can say that.
These sisters would never boast about the work they're doing on the slavery front, whether in Los Angeles, London or Lagos. They don't seek praise for their heroic actions, near all of which will pass unnoticed, but they do demand our back up – and our prayers.
~
Greg Burke, the former spokesman for Pope Francis, works with the anti-slavery clemency Arise. For more information, write to info@arise.foundation
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Source: https://aleteia.org/2022/02/07/do-you-know-of-the-horror-story-that-isnt-just-in-the-movies/
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