Quotations from Selected Catholic Documents Related to Human Trafficking


Benedict XVI: Migrations: A Sign of the Times (2006)

"[T]rafficking in human beings - especially women ... flourishes where opportunities to improve their standard of living or even to survive are limited. It becomes easy for the trafficker to offer his own "services" to the victims, who often do not even vaguely suspect what awaits them. In some cases there are women and girls who are destined to be exploited almost like slaves in their work, and not infrequently in the sex industry, too." Though I cannot here closely examine the analysis of the consequences of this aspect of migration, I make my own the condemnation voiced by John Paul II against "the widespread hedonistic and commercial culture which encourages the systematic exploitation of sexuality."  
(Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women, 29 June 1995, n. 5)

International Meeting on the Pastoral Care for the Liberation of Women of the Street
Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of the Migrants and Itinerant People
Final Document (2005)

"The Church has a pastoral responsibility to promote the human dignity of persons exploited through prostitution and to advocate for their liberation and economic, educational and formative support. The Church must take up the defense of the legitimate rights of women.

In addition to responding to the pastoral needs of the women of the street, the Church must prophetically denounce the injustices and violence perpetrated against women wherever and in whatever circumstances this may occur. The Church must invite also all men and women of good will to commit themselves to sustaining human dignity by putting an end to the sexual exploitation."
 

First International Meeting for the Pastoral Care of Street Children
Pontifical Council of Migrants and Itinerant People
Final Report (2004)

"[E]ven when public institutions show a clear awareness of the gravity of the phenomenon, they do not adequately mobilize so as to transform this awareness into effective actions of prevention and rehabilitation. The prevalent attitude in the civil society itself is often one of social alarm, because it is faced with a threat to public order. There is thus more concern about personal protection from the danger that the street children present than a readiness to help them; the humanitarian aspect and sense of solidarity with respect to this problem emerge with difficulty, not to mention a Christian attitude towards it.

It is indispensable to give witness to the light of Jesus that illumines and opens new ways to those who feel enveloped by the darkness. It is therefore urgent to awaken in the Christian community its vocation to service and to mission in a growing and sincere awareness of the salvific power of faith and the sacraments. Too many children, in fact, continue to die in the streets in the midst of indifference on the part of the majority. Failure to welcome with a strong commitment the anguished call of the Holy Father for a new evangelization is a true sin of omission of aid to our ‘dying’ brothers. It is therefore important to include in pastoral planning a great variety of forms of action that bring the first proclamation to those who are ‘far-away’, that give the children of the street the opportunity to be accompanied in establishing a new relationship with their own selves, with others, with God, with the community to which they belong or have adopted and to discover that there is someone who loves them."
 

Work among Trafficked Women in Thailand
Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of the Migrants and Itinerant People
Sr. M. Supaporn Chotiphol, R.G.S. (2003)

"If we claim to be Jesus’ Followers, we cannot remove ourselves from the world in which we live. We cannot turn a blind eye, a deaf ear or a cold shoulder to the cries of our sisters and brothers who are being abused and exploited. We have to stand in solidarity with them because they mediate God’s presence for us. We have to do all in our power to bring an end to the poverty and oppression of millions of human beings. We cannot remain undisturbed at appalling violation of their rights as human beings. The desecration of the human being is also the desecration of God’s temple and this is an insult to God. “We have to bear witness together to our common conviction concerning the dignity of people. When any person is oppressed, we are all diminished. When any part of creation is abused or destroyed, our lives are improvised.”

"Trafficking In Human Beings, Drugs, Small Arms And Light Weapons"
Intervention by Msgr. Ettore Balestrero (2003)

"Trafficking in human beings, drugs, small arms and light weapons constitutes a shocking offence against human dignity, and is a very grave violation of fundamental human rights. Who can deny that the majority of victims of trafficking are the poorest and most defenseless of our brothers and sisters?

The Catholic Church has long condemned this plague. She is deeply concerned for the most vulnerable and for the innocent victims of this example of man's inhumanity to man. Many Religious Congregations, Catholic Organizations and volunteer groups, in particular those of humanitarian nature, are strongly committed to the fight against these scourges and in addressing their human, cultural, social and economic implications. Catholic institutions have confronted and denounced the significant overlap between the various types of trafficking, either in terms of organized criminal networks, in transportation facilities and routes, or in financial implications.

The impact of trafficking on the local and global economy is particularly grave:  human capital is wasted, the labor market is affected, health-care costs multiply, large grey economies flourish, negative effects on investment climates are registered, corrupt practices and money laundering spread, entrepreneurial skills available are geared more to non-productive sectors, with a consequent decrease of the GDP and drop in tax revenues."

John Paul II: Message for Lent  (2003)

"Jesus had a particular love for children because of “their simplicity, their joy of life, their spontaneity, and their faith filled with wonder” (Angelus Message, 18 December 1994). For this reason he wishes the community to open its arms and its heart to them, even as he did: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Mt 18:5). Alongside children Jesus sets the “very least of the brethren:” the suffering, the needy, the hungry and thirsty, strangers, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. In welcoming them and loving them, or in treating them with indifference and contempt, we show our attitude towards him, for it is in them that he is particularly present ....

[H]owever, a word must be said about the selfishness of those who do not “receive” children. There are young people who have been profoundly hurt by the violence of adults: sexual abuse, forced prostitution, involvement in the sale and use of drugs; children forced to work or enlisted for combat; young children scarred forever by the breakup of the family; little ones caught up in the obscene trafficking of organs and persons. What too of the tragedy of AIDS and its devastating consequences in Africa? It is said that millions of persons are now afflicted by this scourge, many of whom were infected from birth. Humanity cannot close its eyes in the face of so appalling a tragedy!

What evil have these children done to merit such suffering? From a human standpoint it is not easy, indeed it may be be impossible, to answer this disturbing question. Only faith can make us begin to understand so profound an abyss of suffering. By becoming “obedient unto death, even death on a Cross” (Phil 2:8), Jesus took human suffering upon himself and illuminated it with the radiant light of his resurrection. By his death, he conquered death once for all...

[M]ay this Lent be a time of ever greater concern for the needs of children, in our own families and in society as a whole: for they are the future of humanity.

With childlike simplicity let us turn to God and call him, as Jesus taught us in the prayer of the “Our Father”, “Abba,” “Father.”

Our Father! Let us repeat this prayer often during Lent; let us repeat it with deep emotion. By calling God “Our Father,” we will better realize that we are his children and feel that we are brothers and sisters of one another. Thus it will be an easier for us to open our hearts to the little ones, following the invitation of Jesus: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Mt 18:5).
 

USCCB, Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope (2003)

"Trafficking in persons–in which men, women, and children from all over the globe are transported to other countries for the purposes of forced prostitution or labor–inherently rejects the dignity of the human person and exploits conditions of global poverty." (90)


John Paul II: Letter To Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran (2002)

"The trade in human persons constitutes a shocking offence against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights. Already the Second Vatican Council had pointed to "slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, and disgraceful working conditions where people are treated as instruments of gain rather than free and responsible persons" as "infamies" which "poison human society, debase their perpetrators" and constitute "a supreme dishonor to the Creator" (Gaudium et Spes, 27). Such situations are an affront to fundamental values which are shared by all cultures and peoples, values rooted in the very nature of the human person."

The International Conference "Twenty-First Century Slavery: The Human Rights Dimension To Trafficking In Human Beings" Vatican, 15 May 2002

John Paul II: Letter to Women (1995)

"[W]hen we look at one of the most sensitive aspects of the situation of women in the world, how can we not mention the long and degrading history, albeit often an "underground" history, of violence against women in the area of sexuality? At the threshold of the Third Millennium we cannot remain indifferent and resigned before this phenomenon. The time has come to condemn vigorously the types of sexual violence which frequently have women for their object and to pass laws which effectively defend them from such violence. Nor can we fail, in the name of the respect due to the human person, to condemn the widespread hedonistic and commercial culture which encourages the systematic exploitation of sexuality and corrupts even very young girls into letting their bodies be used for profit." (5)


John Paul II: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992)

2414 The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason - selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian - lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord."

2297 Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.

Vatican II - Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World
Gadium et Spes (1965)

"Coming down to practical and particularly urgent consequences, this council lays stress on reverence for man; everyone must consider his every neighbor without exception as another self, taking into account first of all His life and the means necessary to living it with dignity,(8) so as not to imitate the rich man who had no concern for the poor man Lazarus.(9)

In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception. and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering for a sin he did not commit, or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord, "As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me" (Matt. 25:40).

Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator." (27)

Gregory XVI: In Supremo (1839)

The 1839 Constitution In Supremo by Gregory XVI continued the antislavery teaching of his predecessors, and was in the same manner not accepted by many of those bishops, priests and laity for whom it was written. As we will see, even today many authors do not have an accurate understanding of this work. First, however, let us consider the content of In Supremo itself.

"There were to be found subsequently among the faithful some who, shamefully blinded by the desire of sordid gain, in lonely and distant countries did not hesitate to reduce to slavery (in servitutem redigere) Indians, Blacks and other unfortunate peoples, or else, by instituting or expanding the trade in those who had been made slaves by others, aided the crime of others. Certainly many Roman Pontiffs of glorious memory, Our Predecessors, did not fail, according to the duties of their office, to blame severely this way of acting as dangerous for the spiritual welfare of those who did such things and a shame to the Christian name."

Gregory cites various predecessors and their antislavery teachings, even recalling the familiar phrase in servitutem redigere contained in the work of Paul III and his successors. He mentions the efforts of Clement I, Pius II, Paul III, Benedict XIV, Urban VIII and Pius VII, before concluding this historical summary:

"Indeed these sanctions and this concern of Our Predecessors availed in no small measure, with the help of God, to protect the Indians and the other peoples mentioned from the cruelties of the invaders and from the greed of Christian traders."

Further in In Supremo:

"The slave trade, although it has been somewhat diminished, is still carried on by numerous Christians. Therefore, desiring to remove such a great shame from all Christian peoples ... and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to bother unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery (in servitutem redigere) Indians, Blacks or other such peoples. Nor are they to lend aid and favor to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not humans but rather mere animals, having been brought into slavery in no matter what way, are, without any distinction and contrary to the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold and sometimes given over to the hardest labor."

"We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this trade in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in these Apostolic Letters."

From: THE POPES AND SLAVERY: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT by Fr. Joel S. Panzer, Catholic Answers, January/February 1996 

Paul III: Sublimis Deus (1537)

'The bull of Pope Paul III, Sublimis Deus - "The Sublime God" (June 2, 1537), is regarded as the most important papal pronouncement on the human condition of the Indians." It is, moreover, addressed to all of the Christian faithful in the world, and not to a particular bishop in one area, thereby not limiting its significance, but universalizing it.

"Seeing this and envying it, the enemy of the human race, who always opposes all good men so that the race may perish, has thought up a way, unheard of before now, by which he might impede the saving word of God from being preached to the nations. He has stirred up some of his allies who, desiring to satisfy their own avarice, are presuming to assert far and wide that the Indians of the West and the South who have come to our notice in these times be reduced to our service like brute animals, under the pretext that they are lacking the Catholic Faith. And they reduce them to slavery (Et eos in servitutem redigunt), treating them with afflictions they would scarcely use with brute animals."

The common pretext of the allies of "the enemy of the human race," i.e. Satan, for enslaving the Indians was that they lacked the Faith. Some of the Europeans used the reasoning that converting the Indians should be accomplished by any means necessary, thus making the Faith an excuse for war and enslavement. Paul III stated that the practice of this form of servitude was "unheard of before now." This clearly indicates that the practice of enslaving an entire ethnic group of people—the Indians of South America—for no morally justifiable reason was indeed different from anything previously encountered.

Regarding the necessity of restoring and maintaining the liberty of the Indians specifically:

"Therefore, We, . . . noting that the Indians themselves indeed are true men and are not only capable of the Christian faith, but, as has been made known to us, promptly hasten to the faith' and wishing to provide suitable remedies for them, by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples—even though they are outside the faith—who shall hereafter come to the knowledge of Christians have not been deprived or should not be deprived of their liberty or of their possessions. Rather they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery, and that whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void. These same Indians and other peoples are to be invited to the said faith in Christ by preaching and the example of a good life."

From: THE POPES AND SLAVERY: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT by Fr. Joel S. Panzer, Catholic Answers, January/February 1996 

Eugene IV: Sicut Dudum (1435)

"On January 13, 1435, Eugene IV issued from Florence the bull Sicut Dudum. This bull condemned the enslavement of the black natives of the newly colonized Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The Pope stated that after being converted to the faith or promised baptism, many of the inhabitants were taken from their homes and enslaved:

"They have deprived the natives of their property or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery (subdiderunt perpetuae servituti), sold them to other persons and committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them.... Therefore We ... exhort, through the sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed for their sins, one and all, temporal princes, lords, captains, armed men, barons, soldiers, nobles, communities and all others of every kind among the Christian faithful of whatever state, grade or condition, that they themselves desist from the aforementioned deeds, cause those subject to them to desist from them, and restrain them rigorously. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex that, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their pristine liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands ... who have been made subject to slavery (servituti subicere). These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money."

The date of this Bull, 1435, is very significant. Nearly 60 years before the Europeans were to find the New World, we already had the papal condemnation of slavery as soon as this crime was discovered in one of the first of the Portuguese geographical discoveries.

Eugene IV was clear in his intentions both to condemn the enslavement of the residents of the Canary Islands, and to demand correction of the injustice within 15 days. Those who did not restore the enslaved to their liberty in that time were to incur the sentence of excommunication ipso facto."

From: THE POPES AND SLAVERY: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT by Fr. Joel S. Panzer, Catholic Answers, January/February 1996