Pope Francis: Individuals, institutions must avoid buying products made with child labor

CV NEWS FEED // Individuals and institutions have a moral responsibility to find out whether the products they buy are made with child labor and to invest elsewhere if needed, Pope Francis said this week. 

“We must recognize that, if we want to eradicate child labour, we cannot be complicit in it,” Pope Francis said in his Jan. 15 General Audience. “And when is this the case? For example, when we purchase products that involve child labour. How can we eat and dress, knowing that behind that food and those garments there are exploited children, who work instead of going to school?”

“Find out where those products come from. Awareness of what we purchase is a first act in order not to be complicit,” he added. 

While some might say that one person’s actions will not make much of a difference, it is still worth the individual effort, Pope Francis said. 

“Each one can be a drop that, together with many other drops, can become a sea,” he said. 

Companies, church institutions, and other organizations also have an obligation in this fight, he said. They can invest in companies that do not allow or use child labor. 

This is the second week in a row Pope Francis has spoken out against child labor during his General Audience. 

On Jan. 8 he decried that “the century that generates artificial intelligence and plans multiplanetary existences has not yet reckoned with the scourge of humiliated, exploited, mortally wounded childhood.”

Continuing to speak on this urgent issue, Pope Francis said in the Jan. 15 audience that hundreds of millions of children across the world are subject to forced labor, and other children to sex trafficking and forced marriages, and still others kidnapped and killed in organ trafficking.

Pope Francis denounced child abuse as heinous, despicable, a crime, and “a gross violation of God’s commandments.”

“No child should be abused. Even one case is already too many,” he said. “It is therefore necessary to awaken our consciences, to practice closeness and genuine solidarity with abused children and young people, and at the same time to build trust and synergies between those who are committed to offering them opportunities and safe places in which to grow up serenely.” 

He commended countries that have put the rights of children into writing, and later noted that a number of states and international groups have initiated laws and efforts against child labor, but said “more can be done.”

In the conclusion of his address, Pope Francis referenced Matthew 25:40: “Let us always remember the words of Jesus: ‘Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’”