Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - “A traditional custom harmful for women and children”: this is how handbook on education issued by the Catholic Church in Ethiopia describes the practice of mutilating the female genitals, or infibulation
While the subject is discussed in newspapers and on the web there are more reports of tragic trafficking of human organs involving children. Serious threats to anyone who has the courage to denounce this violence in particular the Spanish sisters Servants of Mary and Brazilian missionary sister in Nampula, capital of northern Mozambique.
A group of missionaries in Africa who have made school and education a privileged means of struggling to abolish these practices discuss the question.
Infibulation is not cultural value. It is a problem which regards all religions, including traditional religions. Like many other forms of slavery it dominates and subjects women from youth. The physical and moral trauma deriving from diverse forms of infibulation is the cause of life long suffering.
Sr Italina Serato, with years of missionary experience in Uganda, is now in Milan working in the sector of Justice, Peace and Human Rights. The Sister said she listened carefully to a missionary who came to the novitiate to describe the different types of female genital mutilation; how the girls suffered and the report made to the United Nations. Another older missionary from Egypt told of the tragedies and suffering she saw including infibulation. “The women are brain washed. They are made to think it is necessary to become adult women. In Central Africa I saw the same custom. It will take a lot of information and education at school to overcome this mentality”, she concluded.
(AP) (10/2/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe:25 Parole:303)
