DAY OF PRAYER AND AWARENESS AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING (FEAST OF SAINT BAKHITA): Trafficking in Persons Is “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons” by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation includes, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. Pope Francis attaches enormous importance to the plight of the millions of men, women and children who are trafficked and enslaved. They are among the most dehumanized and discarded of people in the modern world and all over the world. Human trafficking, he says, is an “atrocious scourge,” an “aberrant plague” and an “open wound on the body of contemporary society.” In September 2015, the Holy Father told the United Nations that evils like “human trafficking, the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labour, including prostitution” cannot be met by “solemn commitments” alone. “We need to ensure that our institutions” - and indeed all our efforts - “are truly effective in the struggle against all these scourges.” As Saint John Paul stated in 1988, “When the individual is not recognized and loved in the person’s dignity as the living image of God (cf. Gen 1:26), the human being is exposed to more humiliating and degrading forms of ‘manipulation’, that most assuredly reduce the individual to a slavery to those who are stronger.” Pope Francis stresses that Catholics should engage personally, within the family: “The work of raising awareness must begin at home, with ourselves, because only in this way will we be able to then make our communities aware, motivating them to commit themselves so that no human being may ever again be a victim of trafficking.” More at the Vatican website on this issue at https://migrants-refugees.va/traffickingslavery