After the Angelus:
[…] And next Tuesday, liturgical memorial of Saint Josephine Bakhita, we will
observe World Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking . This is a
deep wound, inflicted by the shameful pursuit of economic interests, without any
respect for the human person. Many girls — we see them on the streets — who are
not free, they are slaves of traffickers, who send them to work and, if they do not
bring [back] money, they beat them. This is happening in our cities today. Let us
really think about it.
Faced with these scourges of humanity, I express my sorrow and I urge all those
with responsibility to act decisively to prevent both exploitation and the humiliating
practices that afflict women and girls in particular. […]
[…] In Monferrato: John, a young Ghanaian man, 25 years old, a migrant, who
suffered all the things that many migrants suffer to get here, and in the end he
settled in Monferrato. He began to work, to build his future, in a winery. And then
he fell ill with a terrible cancer. He is dying. And when they told him the truth, [and
asked him] what he would have liked to do, [he replied:] “Go back home to
embrace my father before dying”. As he was dying, he thought of his father. And in
that village in Monferrato, they immediately took up a collection and, medicated
with morphine, they put him and a companion on a plane and sent him home so
that he could die in his father’s arms. This shows us that in the midst of so much
bad news today, there are good things, there are “saints next door”. Thank you for
these two testimonies which are good for us. […]
