Nezt Wednesday, there will be an important conference on human trafficking here in Washington. Human Trafficking has become an increasingly evil scourge in many countries and the Catholic Church has been at the forefront of efforts to both confront it and to help the survivors.
The conference next week will include a panel of torture and human trafficking survivors. Whether for political activities or as fodder for forced prostitution rings, the twin evils of torture and human trafficking has left countless victims. A second panel in the afternoon will focus on advocacy. Between the two panels will be a keynote address by Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, the State Department's point person on these issues. The entire event will conclude with remarks by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington whose career supporting a range of social justice issues is second-to-none.
The event is free and open to the public, but those who wish to attend are asked to register here. The conference is sponsored by the Franciscan Action Network, about which I wrote here, with Franciscans International and Catholic University's Institute for Policy Reserach & Catholic Studies