In 2011, the Obama administration cut off funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) that was used to fight human trafficking. The USCCB lost funding for its refusal to provide abortions, sterilizations and artificial birth control in their anti-trafficking programs, as these services are all immoral, according to Catholic teaching.
Now, the bishops have re-grouped, and are launching a new initiative in the fight against human trafficking.
The USCCB’s new educational campaign, The Amistad Movement, rolls out this year. Lummert [Nathalie Lummert, special-programs director at the USCCB’s Office of Migrant and Refugee Service] explained the program reaches directly into at-risk urban and rural communities, where traffickers seek to blend their victims into the immigrant population. The program trains community leaders to identify victims, help rescue them and muster the support and resources they need.
“They will be empowered to identify trafficking in their community, rather than someone from the outside trying to identify it,” Lummert said.
Nearly 17,000 men, women and children are trafficked from overseas each year, according to the USCCB Anti-Trafficking Program.
Lummert goes on to say that now that the government is not funding programs like this, the bishops have greater flexibility in what they are able to offer. “We’re able to leverage more resources,” Lummert said. “When you have a variety of private sources and private donors, you are really free to do what the Church wants to do.”
