Faithful’s duty to fight human trafficking–Archbishop Soc Villegas

CBCP president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

LINGAYEN, Philippines-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates “Soc” Villegas on Sunday called on the Catholic faithful to make it a personal commitment to work against human trafficking, calling it “a serious duty of individual Christians.”

“It is our Christian duty to do everything we can to prevent anyone in our midst from being trafficked, and to make sure that those who have fallen into the traffickers’ trap are set free and are able to come home and resume their normal lives with their families, friends and community,” said Villegas, also the president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

In a pastoral letter, Villegas said it was the duty of the state and society to join the fight against human trafficking, which is a crime against the fundamental rights of every individual.

“Beyond that, charity and compassion also demand that Christians exert every effort to free human traffickers from the motives and attractions of their illicit trade and to draw them back to genuinely good and beneficial pursuits,” he said.

Villegas said that about 800,000 children, women and men become victims of human trafficking across international borders worldwide yearly, with 30 million presently forced to do labor against their will.

“About 150,000 of them are said to be Filipinos, mostly children who are physically exploited and sexually abused. Every year, many Filipino men and women who migrate abroad for work end up in conditions of involuntary servitude. Happily, this does not characterize the general condition of the Filipino diaspora, which now counts some 10 million in various parts of the world,” he said.

Villegas described human trafficking as a “form of modern-day slavery, no less dehumanizing and cruel than any old form of slavery.”

The CBCP head quoted Pope Francis as describing human trafficking as an “open wound on the body of contemporary society,” a “scourge upon the body of Christ,” a “crime against humanity” and a “grave violation of fundamental human rights.”

He said it would be a dishonor for Christians to know about the fate of these victims but only think themselves lucky to have been spared from such misfortune and feel no compassion to be one in the suffering of the victims and make an effort to fight the horrific crime.