Caritas organisations and supporters are invited to pray for the child and adolescent victims of human trafficking on 8th February.
This day marks the International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking on which Caritas joins with the Vatican and a variety of religious orders to remember children who have been trafficked and reflect on how we can help them.
Caritas in Italy provides cooking courses, a prevention practice to keep migrants safe and out of human traffickers. Photo by Stefano Schirato for Caritas
Caritas president Cardinal Luis Tagle has urged us all first and foremost to have compassion for the victims of trafficking. He said in a recent homily, “The mercy of Jesus is on families, on mothers and parents losing their children to violence, to vices, to human trafficking, to new forms of slavery, children who are being kidnapped, sold to prostitution, their body parts harvested in an international business of body parts.”
Please find here resources for boosting awareness as well as a prayer and reflections.
Watch a film by Caritas France about young girls trafficked in France.
Hear a short trafficking story from Caritas India.
Read about a young boy from Honduras trafficked when he went to America.
For more information about news and events around trafficking day please click here.
The 8th February is the feast day of St Josephine Bakhita. She was born in Darfur, Sudan in 1869. At the age of nine she was sold into slavery. She was eventually freed and became a nun noted for her special charisma and reputation for sanctity. She was canonised in the year 2000.