Around the world, human trafficking has reached horrific new heights. Fueled by conflict, poverty, food insecurity and the effects of climate change, traffickers are finding new opportunities to prey on those who are searching for safety. Pope Francis, who has made combating human trafficking a priority, recently acknowledged the impact of Talitha Kum at an exhibit in Rome.
In January, the Supreme Court ruled that a Trump administration order that makes it easier for the government to block immigrants from obtaining admission into the United States, or gaining residency status, can be enforced until a final court ruling is issued.
Over the next 10 years, Georgetown University will divest from fossil fuels – a move heralded by Catholic environmental activists as putting Pope Francis’s ecological vision into action.
Bishop William Wack believes the new film “Just Mercy” “puts a human face” on the crisis facing America’s prison population and believes it could be a tool for awakening Catholic consciences to the reform that’s needed.
Moral theology often focuses on individual policy decisions and how they measure against Catholic teaching – but too little attention has been paid to how Catholics should navigate voting for specific candidates, said Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego in a sweeping address ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
By devoting several minutes of his State of Union address on Feb. 4 to school choice, President Donald Trump put the topic in the national spotlight. It’s an issue that Catholic educators care deeply about, because any government policy that supports school choice could make Catholic schools affordable for many more parents, advocates say.
Dorothy Day, whose life was a series of seeming contradictions, might be bemused at this one: The DVD version of a documentary about her life has, more than a month before the film reaches the PBS airwaves, made it to the top spot on the Amazon documentary sales chart.
As the 2020 presidential race kicks into high gear – just two days after the Iowa caucuses and one day after the State of the Union – the U.S. bishops released a series of new videos aimed to help inform Catholics on the Church’s teachings ahead of a national election.
America is failing the survivors of human trafficking. As the epidemic proliferates, federal funding has systematically been cut to limit aid to victims with little public outrage, and as law enforcement grapples with the illicit black market moving from the dark streets to the dark web, young girls are still stigmatized for being victims of sexual exploitation.
According to the “Global Report on Trafficking in Persons,” the most common form of human trafficking (79 percent) is sexual exploitation — and the victims are predominantly women and girls — followed by forced labour (18 percent).
