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The message for Sea Sunday from the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples reads as follows:
This world of the sea, with the continuous migration of people today, must take into account the complex effects of globalization and, unfortunately, must come to grips with situations of injustice, especially when the freedom of a ship’s crew to go ashore is restricted, when they are abandoned altogether along with the vessels on which they work, when they risk piracy at sea and the damage of illegal fishing.
‘The vulnerability of seafarers, fishermen and sailors calls for an even more attentive solicitude on the Church’s part and should stimulate the motherly care that, through you, she expresses to all those whom you meet in ports and on ships or whom you help on board during those long months at sea’.
These words were addressed by Pope Benedict XVI to the participants of the XXIII AoS Congress held in the Vatican City, November 19-23, 2012.
As a matter of fact, for more than 90 years the Catholic Church, through the Work of the Apostleship of the Sea with its network of chaplains and volunteers in more than 260 ports of the world, has shown her motherly care by providing spiritual and material welfare to seafarers, fishers and their families.
As we celebrate Sea Sunday, we would like to invite every member of our Christian communities to become aware and recognize the work of an estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million seafarers who at any time are sailing in a globalized worldwide fleet of 100,000 ships carrying 90 per cent of the manufactured goods.
Very often, we do not realize that the majority of the objects we use in our daily life are transported by ships criss-crossing the oceans. Multinational crews experience complex living and working conditions on board, months away from their loved ones, abandonment in foreign ports without salaries, criminalization and natural (storms, typhoons, etc.) and human (pirates, shipwreck, etc.) calamities. Continue reading
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