During a U.N. Security Council open debate Nov. 21 on human trafficking in conflict situations, Archbishop Bernardito Auza said as wars and conflicts rage, “trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation, forced labor and similar crimes will continue to flourish.”
U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Callista Gingrich, has stated her efforts will be in fighting human trafficking and protecting religious liberty around the globe, not just regarding the persecution of Christians, but of any religious minority.
At the Church of St. Peter Claver, a saint venerated throughout the Americas as a champion of human rights, Pope Francis offered special prayers for Venezuela and its people suffering in the midst of a huge political and economic crisis.
Jesuit Father Michael Czerny, undersecretary of the migrant and refugee section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, spoke at a meeting in Vienna Sept. 4-5 that was part of the U.N. process for developing and adopting a Global Compact for Migration and a Global Compact on Refugees.
The “completely senseless deaths” of 10 people who died of heat exhaustion and suffocation they suffered from being held in a tractor-trailer “is an incomprehensible tragedy,” said Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio.
The event focused on the theme “Encountering those on the Margins.”
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met Feb. 23 with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, to discuss U.S.-Vatican cooperation in fighting human trafficking and ending modern slavery.
When Pope Francis posed for a photo Jan. 18 with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, it was not a protocol-dictated nicety; it was a recognition of the commitment on the part of the pope and of a coalition of state and private agencies in Louisiana to stop human trafficking.
