The Catholic Weekly 9 August 2020

8 9, August, 2020 F rom the archbishop catholicweekly.com.au A beautiful report It’s disgraceful that NSWhas stalled anti-slavery legislation apparently to protect business “ L et us not despair; it is a blessed cause, and success, ere long, will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory: we have obtained, for these poor creatures, the recognition of their human nature, which for a while was most shame- fully denied. This is the first Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP speaks at the launch of the 2020 Australian Catholic Anti-slavery Network report at Cathedral House on 29 July. PHOTO: GIOVANNI PORTELLI A participant at the 29 July launch of the 2020 ACAN report holds a prayer for victims of slavery and trafficking. G PORTELLI fruits of our efforts; let us per- severe and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal… and ex- tinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country.” SoWilliamWilberforce end- ed his speech to the British Parliament on 18 April 1791, in defence of his Bill “to pre- vent the farther importation of Slaves into the British colonies in the West Indies”. Now that chattel slavery is no longer a systemic concern inWestern societies, we might think Wilberforce’s statement and his attempts to get legal recognition and prohibition of slavery is just an historical curio of little further relevance today. Yet the people gathered here today know that the era of slavery is not over; that mod- ern slavery and human traf- ficking are realities inmoder- nity, and that attempts to get our parliaments to recognise the reality and prohibit the practice (including prohibiting profiting from it) are as nec- essary today as they were 229 years ago. Wilberforce took heart from the fact that there was a grad- ual but real recognition of the problem in his day amongst political leaders and the gener- al public that made prohibi- tion no longer unthinkable. We, too, are witnessing such growing consciousness and determination regarding the plight of modern slaves and the blight this is on our soci- eties. There have, for instance, been a series of internation- al conferences on combatting modern slavery and, for the last few years at least, we’ve had this World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. Another sign of this growing consciousness is the increased devotion to St Josephine Bakh- ita: this previously little known slave-saint hosts the World Day of Prayer, Reflection and Action against Human Traf- ficking on her feast day (8th February), and the newWest- ern Sydney campus of the Aus- tralian Catholic University will be dedicated to her name. A third emblem of this change of mentality is the Australian Catholic Anti-Slav- ery Network and its efforts to obtain and publish a reliable and fine-grained picture of the supply chains for goods and services we enjoy in Australia, and I am very pleased to see that research culminate in to- day’s report. It is a beautiful report, not just an informative one, and it draws the reader along with its information arguments and hopefulness. ACAN now has 32 member entities, includ- ing dioceses and religious in- stitutes across Australia and Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP