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The seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason - selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian - lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit. St. Paul directed a Christian master to treat his Christian slave "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord."
-Catechism of the Catholic Church
Documents and Statements
“To these most vulnerable members of society the Kingdom of heaven belongs (cf. Mt 19:14), yet so often they are simply forgotten or shamelessly exploited as soldiers, laborers, or innocent victims in the trafficking of human beings. No effort should be spared to urge civil authorities and the international community to fight these abuses and to offer young children the legal protection they justly deserve.”
-Pope Benedict XVI
Address to Bishops of Sri Lanka
May 2005
Resources
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