ROME — Pope Francis denounced the exploitation of women in his message Tuesday for the World Day of Prayer and Reflection Against Human Trafficking.
“Human trafficking, through domestic or sexual exploitation, violently relegates women and girls to their supposed role of subordination, in the provision of domestic or sexual services, and to their role as providers of care and dispensers of pleasure,” the pontiff lamented in his video message.
This exploitation “proposes yet again a model of relationships marked by the power of the male gender over the female,” he asserted, which happens still today, “and at a high level.”
The theme of human trafficking “invites us to consider the condition of women and girls, subjected to multiple forms of exploitation, also through forced marriage, domestic slavery and slave labor,” he said. “The thousands of women and girls who are trafficked every year denounce the dramatic consequences of relational models based on discrimination and submission.”
“The organization of societies worldwide is still far from reflecting clearly the fact that women have the same dignity and identical rights as men,” Francis insisted, underscoring the situation of “women who endure situations of exclusion, mistreatment and violence.”
“The violence suffered by every woman and every girl is an open wound on the body of Christ, on the body of all humanity; it is a deep wound that affects every one of us too,” he said.
“There are many women who have had the courage to rebel against violence,” he said, adding that men are called as well “to say no to all violence, including that against women and girls.”