Ayo Fasoro

 

Pope Leo XIV is waging a moral battle against the scourge of violence against children.

Thirty years ago, on 23 March 1996, Avvenire, a newspaper of The Italian Bishops Conference, introduced Popotus,  a supplement addressed to children. The Holy Father used the opportunity to address the wellbeing of children around the world.

“We must safeguard their childhood and guide their growth so that they may become protagonists of a renewed world.” The words of the Pope could not have come at a better time now that the world dulls the potentials of children as shapers and leaders of the future of mankind.

Pope Leo XIV cautions against adult seeming nonconcern as “Children come to believe they can find in AI chatbots their best friends or the oracle of all knowledge, thus dulling their intellect and their capacity for relationships, numbing their creativity and their thinking.”

 

Children in various parts of the world are put in arms way by being sent into violent adult engagements.

Armed with weapons of war, children as young as eleven years of age are sent into battlefields of horror, to be killed and to kill. Children who traditionally should be shielded from bloodletting are engaged by adults to shed blood; theirs and that of their opponents. The result being their baptism into the field of violence during the age of innocence.

Children of both genders are recruited into prostitution at an early age. Prostitution on its own is undesirable. It is the debasement of God’s image. A desecration of the acorn of God’s creativity. To be engaged in prostitution is a malfeasance of indescribable depth. To lure or force another person, one made in the image of God, into such horrific existence is a crime and a sin.

When the world is supposed to be enjoying the fruits of technological growth and advancement, when human intellect has conquered unimagined obstacles, when the wealth of nations, communities, and individuals are no longer counted in mere millions, but in billions, and in trillions, children of the world in their millions go to bed on empty stomachs. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and dragged into dark forests by their fleeing parents or by evil men who kidnap them for enslavement or for ransom. Why do children of this world deserve such? The home is no longer a fortress of peace, nurture, or safety. What type of adults would emerge from environments where childhood innocence is brazenly ripped, and the hope of bright futures robbed by uncaring men of power or of violence?

The state is charged with providing a healthy environment for the overall development of leaders of tomorrow- education, health, social amenities and security. But today’s state exists only for the enrichment of the few who acquire power unfairly.

For what purpose did man conquer the moon, if 56 years after the first man took one giant leap for mankind, man is still engaged in barbaric warfare?

Man picked Tranquility Base as landing spot on the Moon. There a plaque was left; “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon – July 1969 A.D. – We came in peace for all mankind.” 

Where is that peace today for mankind? Where is Tranquility? Where is peace for the children of today, potential astronauts of the future, being carted like commodities into the jungle of no hope? In some cases, never to return. How do we profess peace for all mankind only to now treat people who are different inhumanely when children are killed in schools, with no remorse, no consequences, no recognition beyond their number – 175?

Thank you Holy Father for denouncing the war against children.

 

Ayo Fasoro

Non Sum Dignus