VATICAN - First International Meeting on Pastoral Care for Street Women: “An insult to fundamental values common to all cultures and peoples, values rooted in the very nature of the human person” said Cardinal Fumio Hamao

Monday, 20 June 2005

Vatican City (Fides Service) - “We thought it opportune to organise this meeting to discuss a phenomenon which - far from being eliminated in the process of civil evolution - is still part of social tissue. I refer to trading in women, so called street women.” This was said this morning by Japanese born Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples in an address to open the First International Meeting On Pastoral Care For Street Women, being held in Rome at the Council’s offices.
The greater part of this trade “is the first consequence of a system of injustice at the basis of society and which in a number of areas leads to exploitation of women” the Cardinal said mentioning the improper use of the image of the woman, the never-ending scourge of prostitution, new forms of slavery, that is trafficking in women and the industry of sex tourism. “All of this is an insult to women and a serious violation of the most elementary of human rights” said Cardinal Fumio Hamao. The purpose of the Meeting is to provide an opportunity for serious reflection on the numerous, complex and latent questions inherent to these evils, in order to provide material and spiritual support to help women gradually free themselves of the yoke of exploitation.
Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples in his intervention on the subject “Street women today, a pastoral challenge” said that the meeting followed an “international Congress on Pastoral Care for Street Children last year and is a sign of our deep concern for this ‘category’ - if we may use this word - of people with a special need for authentic charity, apostolic zeal in the exercise of the indispensable mission of the Good Samaritan”.
Although reflection will focus mainly on Europe, on this continent many street women are non European. “Prostitution is not a decision (when it is a decision and not violence) made easily, lightly with pleasure - said Archbishop. Marchetto - instead it often entails living with distress, pain and suffering borne in order to survive. For some prostitution is the only “way out”, but to which there is again no “way out”, and which entails violence, cynicism , self -destruction and sometimes even death. But what street women are looking for is what every human person desires, to be loved and respected by someone.”
This meeting in itself is a sign of the Catholic Church’s profound concern for the plight of street women, said Archbishop Marchetto, and determination to put together interactive reflection and experience sharing “to form a basis for greater co-operation and co-ordination in pastoral care for women suffering from exploitation and abuse, in particular sexual abuse, in view not only of solidarity but also specific dialoguing and missionary pastoral care of communion”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 20/6/2005; Righe 39 - Parole 517)


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