Lanai, Hawaii —
An estimated 200 million children worldwide are forced into indentured servitude, be they child soldiers, forced laborers, or victims of pornography.
The United Nations estimates that 1.2 million children are trafficked every year. The phrase “Hell on Earth” comes immediately to mind.
It’s a Hell that Sister Gracy has confronted head on. An Indian nun with the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity, Sister Gracy - well, quite simply - got pissed off at the many horrors visited upon innocent children by slavers, slave traders, and their enablers in business and government every day on this planet. So, she’s doing something about it.
Sister Gracy is a leader of AMRAT, a Mumbai-based organization that seeks to put an end to these decidedly illegal and profoundly immoral acts. The Asian Movement of Women Religious Against Human Trafficking provides numerous programs to raise awareness of child trafficking.
AMRAT’s efforts include awareness-building seminars, meetings with victims and their families, prayer services in schools, street plays, and training local police departments. Through AMRAT, Sister Gracy and her Canossian Order colleagues have even undertaken rescue missions, too.
Sister Gracy is quoted in a February 2017 Crux Magazine article after one rescue mission that, “This experience has left a mark in my heart which will always move me towards justice and love for the less fortunate, the forgotten, the lost, the least and the unknown.”
Now isn’t that the true calling of religious action, towering above so much of the hatred, divisiveness, and hypocrisy that sometimes passes for religion these days?
Image courtesy of Imagens Evangelicas.