People and institutions can protect children by changing what they buy and what they invest in, Pope Francis said yesterday. Source: CNS.
“Fighting exploitation, particularly child exploitation, is the high road to building a better future for all of society,” the Pope said, speaking about child exploitation during his audience for the second consecutive week.
Hundreds of thousands of children are subjected to dangerous working conditions, sex trafficking, pornography or forced marriages, the Pope said, but “child abuse, in whatever form it may be, is a despicable and heinous act. It is a most serious violation of God’s commandments”.
Pope Francis urged all people to consider what they can do as individuals to respond to the societal problem of child exploitation.
“First of all, we must recognise that, if we want to eradicate child labour, we cannot be complicit in it,” he said, explaining that people support child labour “when we buy products that employ child labour”.
“How can I eat and dress myself knowing that behind that food or those clothes, there are exploited children who work instead of going to school?” he said. “The knowledge about what we buy is the first act in not being complicit. Look at where those products come from.”
Likewise, institutions, including Church bodies, have a “responsibility” to act against the exploitation of children “by shifting their investments to companies that do not use and do not allow child labour”, he said.
After his main talk, a circus performed tricks for the entertainment of the pilgrims gathered in the St. Paul VI Audience Hall. Pope Francis joined the act by tossing a ball for a show dog to catch.
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Divest from companies that exploit children, Pope says (By Justin McLellan, CNS)
