“I urge you to be apostles for the youth in your dioceses,” Pope Francis said in a September 12 address to visiting bishops from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Pope emphasized pastoral work with young people, both as a way to build the nation’s future and as a protection for children menaced by warfare and poverty. He spoke with special emphasis about the need to protect children from recruitment into military forces.
By training young people in the Gospel virtues, the Church can promote long-term peace, the Pontiff said. Also, he remarked: “The most effective way to overcome violence, inequality and ethnic divisions is to equip the young with a critical mind and to offer them the opportunity to mature an understanding of Gospel values.”
Pope Francis also encouraged the African bishops, who were making their ad limina visit, to give high priority to pastoral work with families.
Slavery today is not a problem confined to the world’s impoverished countries, the Vatican’s representative reminded a session of the UN’s human-rights council.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s permanent observer at UN offices in Geneva, acknowledged that most public comments on human trafficking refer to incidents such as the “massive kidnapping and sale of young girls” by Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, or the 250,000 children who are forced into military service and/or used as “human shields” in warfare. But there are “other, subtler forms of slavery” as well, he said.
The archbishop pointed to forced labor by children, forced marriage, and “caste-based forms of slavery” as examples. He also cites the lack of education, inadequate access to work, and black-market enterprises as factors that can lead to effective slavery.
“We need to break the silence about this ‘open wound on the body of contemporary society,” Archbishop Tomasi told the UN panel.
