Vatican City, 02 November, 2021 / 8:30 pm (ACI Africa).
Pope Francis called on Tuesday for renewed efforts to free children from “the brutal yoke of labor exploitation.”
In a message to a virtual forum hosted by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Nov. 2, the pope appealed for a new “logic of care” for young people.
“How important it would be for an appropriate and effective juridical order, both international and national in scope, to defend and protect children from this harmful technocratic mentality that has taken over the present,” he said in the message, signed on the pope’s behalf by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
“To this end, there must be an increase in the number of individuals and associations at every level working to ensure that the desire for excessive profit that condemns children and young people to the brutal yoke of labor exploitation gives way to the logic of care.”
The pope’s message was addressed to FAO director general Qu Dongyu at the start of a two-day meeting of the Global Solutions Forum on the theme “Acting together to end child labor in agriculture.”
