Missionaries of Africa highlight anti-slavery efforts
CWN - November 15, 2012
The Society of the Missionaries of Africa, sometimes known as the White Fathers, has begun a yearlong commemoration of the 125th anniversary of its founder’s campaign to end the slave trade. Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a member of the Society who now serves as papal nuncio in Egypt, began the commemoration with a Mass in Rome.
“It is estimated that in the course of four centuries not less than 14 million Africans were captured and deported by European traders to the American plantations and forced to work in abominable conditions until their death,” the initiative’s Facebook page notes. “Historians also calculate that 10 to 18 million Africans were snatched from their villages by Arab traffickers.”
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Posted by: Justin8110 -
Nov. 15, 2012 8:55 PM ET USA
Ending slavery was a noble effort but what about also remembering that the White Fathers were out to save souls by bringing Africans steeped in ancestor worship and ritual magic to the saving waters of baptism and the sacramental life in Christ in the Catholic Church?
