Catholic News 24582

In this age of pandemic we have become accustomed to discussions about viruses, their persistence, and their life-threatening mutations. Upon hearing news of the horrific and racially motivated mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, I was reminded of a line from Pope Francis’ 2020 encyclical letter “Fratelli Tutti, On Fraternity and Social Friendship.” In it, Francis writes: “Racism is a virus that quickly mutates and, instead of disappearing, goes into hiding, and lurks in waiting.”

The metaphor of a virus is particularly useful in thinking about how anti-Black racism functions in the United States. If we think of this nation as something like a single body composed of many parts (sound familiar?) we might imagine that it is indeed infected with a virus, which results in a chronic illness, a “soul-sickness,” known as racism. Like so many viruses — such as the one that causes AIDS, or the one that causes chickenpox and later shingles, or the one that causes mononucleosis and so on — it never fully disappears from the body, even when levels of the virus appear undetectable. Instead, the virus, as Francis correctly said, “goes into hiding, and lurks in waiting.”

Likewise, gun violence in this country might rightly be analogized as a virus. In the past, I have suggested that an apt metaphor might be addiction, which is also a disease, but I now wonder if Francis’ viral metaphor is more helpful. Within the figurative body of the United States, extended across thousands of miles of geographic space, there are millions of firearms possessed by all kinds of people, which are stored in lockers, carried in holsters, and used for good and bad purposes.

For much of the American population, the thought of guns and their disproportionately destructive power rarely comes to mind until a tragedy such as what unfolded in Buffalo this weekend forces a renewed awareness. In this way, gun violence in this country is akin to a virus because the potential for its devastating impacts is always already present, lurking “beneath the surface.”

In this way, we can talk about the twin pandemics that reared their ugly, ruinous heads yet again over the weekend: racism and gun violence. These are often intersecting maladies; particularly when we see overt anti-Black and white supremacist ideology informing mass violence such as in Buffalo this past week or the 2015 mass murder at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

One of the first things that must be done in the face of these viruses of racism and gun violence is to accurately diagnose the illness. This should be an obvious step, yet it is striking that many people, especially white people, are quick to misdiagnose the situation. Among the red herrings typically presented is to assume mental illness is the cause or at least predominant factor in such horrific violence. The New York Times even ran a story on May 15 with a headline that emphasized the alleged shooter’s previous treatment for mental health concerns, which could be used by some to justify mental health stigma.

Despite the popular misconception that mental illness is the root cause of such mass violence, the scientific consensus has been clear for a long time. According to a 2015 scientific journal article, “Epidemiologic studies show that the large majority of people with serious mental illnesses are never violent.”

In fact, those suffering from severe mental illness are most likely to be a threat only to themselves, as the article explains, “mental illness is strongly associated with increased risk of suicide, which accounts for over half of US firearms–related fatalities.”

Recourse to this stereotype about mental illness contributes to two problems simultaneously. First, it reinforces inaccurate and dangerous mental health stigmas, which further inhibits those needing assistance from seeking it and creates a culture of greater isolation for those already suffering. Second, it distracts from the real issues that are at play in racist violence as witnessed in Buffalo and elsewhere: the viruses of anti-Black racism and the absurd proliferation of guns, especially assault weapons, used to kill many people quickly.

On this second point about the distraction from the real issues at hand, this is another matter that the events of last weekend are again bringing into disturbing relief. There is a lot of denial among some white people about the very existence of the virus of racism in this country, let alone its pervasiveness and persistence. Given my previous criticism of many United States bishops’ failure to acknowledge fully the reality of systemic racism, I was not surprised to see this dynamic played out over the weekend. Diocese of Buffalo Bishop Michael Fisher issued a statement on social media about the shooting, but failed to use the word “racism” or acknowledge the racist context.

This sort of literal sin of omission is a milder version of a white misdiagnosis that regularly occurs in the face of the virus of racism. On a regular basis, I receive white vitriol on social media denying the existence of racism in this country. Part of what motivates this sort of absurd pseudo-narrative is a deeply troubling racist conspiracy theory known as “replacement theory” which, as The New York Times recently reported, has increasingly grown mainstream, bolstered by an increasingly extremist Republican Party. According to this distorted worldview, it is actually white people who are the “victims” of racial animus and systemic racism is, therefore, a “lie” or simply “not real.”

The failure of bishops, politicians and ordinary citizens alike to speak plainly and clearly about racism only makes the situation worse. It contributes to the white shock and equivocation that follows unspeakable racist violence like in Buffalo. White denial of the reality of racism, our collective failure to diagnosis this virus truthfully and accurately, and then do something about it, compounds the problem and contributes to mainstream willful ignorance about the complexity and reach of white supremacy in our society and church.

However, Black women and men have been experiencing the long-standing and deep-rooted effects of white supremacy and systemic racism in communities like the one terrorized in Buffalo this weekend for decades. As the Times summarized in an article on May 15, “For many Black people living here, the effects of discrimination have been felt much longer — and the violence represents a uniquely harrowing moment in a lengthy history of trauma.”

I first learned of the Buffalo shooting shortly after I boarded an airplane on a flight to, of all places, Buffalo. I had just left the commencement ceremonies at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, and was heading to another commencement at St. Bonaventure University, about 60 miles south of Buffalo, scheduled for the following morning.

Not only was it eerie to realize I was flying into the city where this mass shooting had just taken place, but also the commencement speaker I had just heard deliver a powerful and theologically rich address was M. Shawn Copeland, the eminent Black Catholic theologian. Copeland has spent much of her impressive career writing, speaking and teaching about the need for Catholic theology to grapple with the long-standing history and persistence of systemic racism in the church and society.

The juxtaposition of reflecting on Copeland’s antiracist theological work alongside the breaking news of white supremacist terrorism against a predominantly Black community in the city where I was then traveling, put into sharp relief a fundamental fact that white people can too easily overlook or forget: these viruses of racism and gun violence are also a Christian problem.

Those who identify as Christians, especially those of us who are white Christians, have a responsibility rooted in the core of our faith tradition to not shy away from diagnosing and responding to these viruses. Because each of these contradicts the core of Christian faith, you cannot claim to be a legitimate Christian and espouse white supremacist ideology, deny the reality of racism, embrace white nationalism or conspiratorial narratives, or support the proliferation of assault weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

And pretending that the body politic or the body of Christ is not infected with these destructive viruses will not make them go away. They will, like the pathogens within human bodies, only grow stronger, more severe, and cause more devastating consequences, ultimately resulting in death as we witnessed last weekend.

The decision by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to close down Catholic News Service was terrible in terms of lowering the standards of Catholic journalism. It was terrible, also, because of its ecclesial significance, which is a related but different concern, one that strikes at a deeper issue for the nation’s bishops. 

The commentary from Fordham University’s David Gibson, published here at NCR, touched on some of the reasons why closing Catholic News Service was ill-advised pastorally. Gibson observed that CNS is “a counterwitness to the proliferation of ideologically driven Catholic media platforms that are driving the church apart, and regular Catholics around the bend — often right out of Catholicism.” That is surely true. 

It is also clear that not enough bishops were alarmed by the prospect that the only remaining wire service specifically focused on news about the Catholic Church in the United States would be the Catholic News Agency, a subsidiary of EWTN. More bishops need to adopt the posture taken by Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, Vermont, a former chair of the bishops’ Committee on Communications. “In Burlington, we don’t want anything to do with CNA because of its affiliation with EWTN and the anti-Francis rhetoric on the network,” Coyne told America magazine recently. 

Several bishops have indicated to me that it was not clear that the complete closing of CNS was what they were voting for last year during the executive session at their fall assembly in Baltimore, when they chose one of five models presented by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, chair of the bishops’ Committee on Priorities and Plans. They told me that they understood there would be cutbacks, but not a complete suspension of operations. What is more, there was no real discussion of the proposal except as a necessary budgetary measure. 

Here, then, I need to disagree somewhat with the explanation offered by former CNS editor Tony Spence, who told NCR’s Brian Fraga, “The culture warrior bishops at the USCCB have always had a certain amount of animus to CNS because it offers straight unbiased reporting. Culture warriors don’t want straight unbiased reporting. They want an echo chamber where everyone has the same opinion.” That is true, but this was not presented to the bishops as a culture war fight and, if it had been, I doubt it would have secured enough votes to pass, or at least it would have generated more opposition.

No, the deeper – and in some ways worse – problem is that the bishops have lost their own commitment to civic engagement, of which the responsibility for providing reliable information is so integral a part. One hundred years ago, bishops were princes, and they ventured forth into the public square from their episcopal manses as leaders of their flock, powerbrokers of a sort, more akin to a labor leader or a prominent civic leader. 

Ironically, after Vatican II called for the church to be an instrument, even a sacrament of the unity of humankind in the world, the bishops lost their footing. They were not clear what tasks were to be ceded to the laity and what remained in their competence. The turbulence of the times, especially the focus less and less on issues of economic justice and more on neuralgic issues of pelvic theology that would come to characterize the culture wars, further estranged the bishops from any kind of civic engagement. Their role was reduced to that of an ethical authority in the public square, and they never grasped the degree to which the church’s traditional, personal ethics on sexual matters was difficult to translate into any kind of public ethics, especially in a pluralistic society.  

Then came the sexual abuse crisis and many bishops resorted to hiding under their desks. 

Now, the bishops largely focus on the internal life of the church. They raise money to support our ministries and our schools. Some may even consider how to evangelize in our secular age. Only a handful routinely and effectively engage the cities in which they live.

You can see this in the official statements responding to the racist terror attack in Buffalo. The statement from the bishops was anemic and did not even come from a bishop. If the bishops’ conference needs to save money, cut the communications staff that drafted such an inadequate statement, not Catholic News Service!

Contrast the bishops’ statement with the one issued by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, one of the bishops who does engage the society and the culture on a regular basis. Cupich decried the racism that inspired the attack and forcefully denounced the lax gun laws that allowed the violence to become a mass casualty event. The force of his language stemmed not just from an appropriate sense of moral outrage but from his years of civic engagement.  

In 2013, during the pre-conclave meetings at which the cardinals discussed what the church needed in a new pope, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio famously invoked the Scriptural image of Jesus knocking at the door. “In Revelation, Jesus says that he is at the door and knocks,” Bergoglio reportedly told the other cardinals, before being elected as Pope Francis. “Obviously, the text refers to his knocking from the outside in order to enter, but I think about the times in which Jesus knocks from within so that we will let him come out.” 

Too many bishops are content to leave the Lord locked in the sacristy.

There is, to be sure, a problem with culture warrior bishops in the U.S. The deeper problem is that so many other bishops do not know how to engage the culture at all. The prerequisite for evangelization is building up culture. Part of a vibrant culture, a big part, is reliable news. That is why closing Catholic News Service’s domestic operations is such a dreadful idea, and should be rescinded. 

Broglio may have presented this to the bishops as a financial necessity, but that only shows the degree to which he fails to grasp the importance of reliable news to civic engagement, and the necessity of civic engagement if the Gospel is to be proclaimed.

Rome — The first time new U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Joseph Donnelly ever stepped foot inside of St. Peter’s Basilica was just hours after he arrived in Rome on March 16, when he attended a prayer service for peace with diplomats from around the world, including Ukraine and Russia.

Laying eyes on Michelangelo’s Pietà, he said the “agony on the Blessed Mother’s face was so real,” especially in light of the raging war. The war in Ukraine has quickly become President Joe Biden’s most pressing international priority, and as Biden’s representative to the Vatican, Donnelly believes the United States has a critical partner here in helping bring about peace.

“I know that the rest of the world, when they hope for one person to solve this problem, they look at the pope,” Donnelly told NCR on May 16, in his first interview with a U.S. news agency since his arrival in Rome.

“The United States will do anything humanly possible to partner with the Vatican or anyone else to see a peaceful conclusion to Ukraine,” he said.

Since moving here two months ago to take up his new post — at 66 years old, this marks his first time ever in the Eternal City — Russia’s war against Ukraine has dominated much of Donnelly’s time, including his first conversation with Pope Francis when he formally presented his diplomatic credentials on April 11.

As a former member of Congress, Donnelly has a deep knowledge of Ukraine, having served on the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee and as the ranking Democratic member of its Strategic Forces Subcommittee. In that capacity, he visited Ukraine on a number of occasions, which he said provided him with a firsthand understanding of how much the country depends on the support of the U.S. to fend off Russian aggression.

“We have different roles” is how he describes the different approaches of the United States and that of the Holy See in helping secure peace.

“Folks have said, ‘Oh my gosh, you work with the Vatican, they may be the only ones who can solve this,’ ” Donnelly recalled. “And that position is shared all around the world.”

“What we try to do is be a good partner to the Vatican,” he said.

One way of doing this, he continued, is by “answering any questions they might have, and telling them very clearly how we view this as a Russian invasion of a sovereign country and that Russia has committed genocide.”

The United States has also sent Ukraine a steady supply of weapons, providing more than $3 billion in military aid.

After the outbreak of the war, Francis decried the rise of defense spending by Western nations to acquire more weapons. Yet in recent weeks, the Vatican’s foreign minister has made clear that the Vatican believes Ukraine has a right to defend itself and that includes receiving weapons from other countries, as long as the response is “proportional.”

Donnelly said he welcomed that affirmation, and noted that “the truth about [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is the only way you can stop him is by stopping him.”

“The only way you can stop him is to do that and the way Ukraine has been able to do that is through friends like the United States who had supplied them with the equipment necessary to protect themselves,” he said.

“What you saw in Bucha would have happened in every single town in Ukraine if we were not there to help,” he said, referring to the Ukrainian city where Russian forces slaughtered an estimated 1,000 civilians and abandoned their bodies in mass graves.

Donnelly also weighed in on Francis’ May 3 interview with the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, where the pope wondered aloud if “the barking of NATO at the gates of Russia” could be Putin’s justification for his aggression against Ukraine. That interview prompted some backlash from defenders of the transatlantic military alliance.

“It’s very clear that this was not caused by NATO,” said Donnelly. “This was caused by Vladimir Putin deciding to attack and invade Ukraine, and so, I think that the Vatican will look at those remarks.”

Donnelly said the comments also have to be understood “in the overall arc of the statements of the pope” on the war.

“The pope is clear that his heart is with Ukraine, that he wants peace and that he wants this to end,” he said.

In that same Italian interview, the pope also said he had offered to visit Moscow to help bring about an end to the war, and that he felt it would be necessary to first visit Russia before considering a visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

“Wherever the pope can go to try to reach peace, I think is important,” Donnelly said, but added that “we [the United States] are very hopeful that he will go to Kyiv.”

While the war in Ukraine has dominated Donnelly’s initial weeks on the job, he said there are a number of issues he hopes to also help spotlight during his time here, including migration, health care and climate change.

During his tenure in the House of Representatives, Donnelly — a pro-life Democrat — cast a critical vote in favor of the Affordable Care Act and later, once elected to the U.S. Senate, he successfully fought against its repeal.

In Rome, he sees this as a natural area of partnership between the U.S. and the Holy See, noting that approximately 25% of the world’s health care is provided by the Catholic Church.

While Donnelly said he is aware that in the coming months there is likely to be continued tension between the Biden administration, the U.S. bishops and the Holy See when a landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion comes down — likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, the court’s 1973 ruling that provided a constitutional right to abortion — he says it will not get in the way of the partnership between the two states.

“The Vatican and the United States agree on so many issues. Many more issues than we disagree,” he said. “And as ambassador I’m focusing my efforts on those places of agreement and cooperation.”

On another delicate matter, that of the Holy See’s relationship with China, Donnelly says the U.S. continues to make it clear that it believes China is a serious human rights offender, particularly when it comes to religious freedom.

Those concerns were brought into sharp focus when Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 90-year-old former Catholic bishop of Hong Kong and an outspoken critic of Beijing’s Communist rule, was arrested for his support of pro-democracy protests.

Donnelly characterized Zen’s arrest as “outrageous” and said the U.S. had registered its concerns over it to the Holy See.

Despite the grim state of world affairs, Donnelly says he considers it a privilege to be in Rome where he considers both Francis and his fellow diplomats from the world as “teammates,” eager to work together for the common good.

As a cradle Catholic and a parishioner of St. Anthony de Padua in South Bend, Indiana, Donnelly says it is still a bit heady that he is now representing the United States at the Holy See, but jokes that the time he spent serving on his local Catholic school board had its own challenges and proved to be a good training ground for navigating the complexities of Vatican diplomacy.

The new ambassador added, with a smirk: “It was equally challenging.”

Sao Paulo — As the ecological crisis in Brazil continues to get worse, the country’s Roman Catholic bishops have become more vocal about its causes, denouncing collaboration between government officials and corporations to carry out destructive mining projects in areas occupied by Indigenous peoples.

On May 5, Bishop José Ionilton Lisboa de Oliveira of Itacoatiara, in Amazonas state, published an official decree saying that his diocese would not accept “financial support, either in cash or in other goods, from politicians, logging companies, mining companies … that contribute to deforestation and to the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, “quilombolas” (descendants of escaped African slaves), riverside communities, and small farmers from their lands.”

Though intended for internal distribution in his diocese, Brazil’s media caught wind of de Oliveira’s decree, and it has gained attention across South America. 

The bishop said he never expected his decree would “reverberate so much or that it could incentivize other bishops to do the same.” But he hopes that other bishops of the Amazon region will agree to a collective statement when they gather in September.

Since the Vatican’s Synod for the Pan-Amazon Region in 2019, bishops from Brazil’s Amazonian region have been discussing ways to strengthen their stance against deforestation. “Of course, bishops act independently,” said de Oliveira, but the reaction to his decree signaled “our adherence to the synod’s conclusions,” he told Religion News Service.

Applying the Vatican’s guidance on the Amazon has not always been easy, said de Oliveira. When he took office in 2017, he noticed that the local communities had not studied Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’.

“We organized meetings with all of our parishes and read it together. Later, we established that we would implement 12 recommendations based on the document,” said de Oliveira. The discussions addressed financial donations, the creation of ecological education programs and reducing garbage.

“But after a few years, nothing had changed,” he lamented.

With local and national elections set for October, de Oliveira, the president of the Bishops’ Conference’s Land Pastoral Commission (or CPT in Portuguese), has been watching the rising violence in Amazonian communities that are being invaded by ranchers, miners and loggers.

According to the pastoral commission, 109 people died as a result of land conflicts in 2021, a huge increase from 2020, when just nine people died. Those figures include homicides as well as deaths indirectly related to rural violence, such as those caused by the poisoning of water and fish with heavy metals, a byproduct of mining operations.

In April, 462 square miles of the Amazon were destroyed, according to Imazon, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the rainforest’s conservation. This represented a 54% growth in comparison to April 2021, making it the worst April in 15 years.

More than 2,600 miles to the southeast of de Oliveira’s diocese, Auxiliary Bishop Vicente Ferreira of Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais state, is planning similar efforts.   

“Beginning with Catholics, we have to raise awareness about the need to divest from mining,” Ferreira told RNS.

Ferreira is the secretary of the Bishops’ Conference’s Special Commission on Integral Ecology and Mining, created in 2019 after the collapse of a tailings dam in Brumadinho that took the lives of 270 people and spilled 423 million cubic feet of mine waste into the Paraopeba River basin.

In January, when heavy rains caused major floods in the region and many houses were covered with mud, Ferreira visited people in the area and said the effects of the 2019 tragedy were still apparent.

“That mud brought with the flood was not real mud, but a toxic mass of tailings mixed with water. The company talks about reparation measures, but some things are irreparable: the lost lives and the contaminated ecosystem,” Ferreira said.

“Mining should be profoundly changed in Brazil, because there is something inherently unsustainable in it,” said the bishop. 

At the end of March, he joined a delegation of Latin American religious leaders on a visit to five European countries, where they campaigned against investment in mining. The group met with political and religious leaders, including Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, head of the European Union’s Commission of Bishops’ Conferences, as well as officials at the Vatican and international Catholic charitable agencies.  

Ferreira wants to see Brazil’s Catholic hierarchy take more radical measures against mining pollution, pointing to the recent decision by the church in the Philippines to stop receiving donations from environmentally destructive industries. 

“Our greatest challenge is to … carry out concrete actions to face that enormous power (of the mining industry). We still do not know how to stop that Goliath,” he said. 

Archbishop Roque Paloschi of Porto Velho, at the northern reaches of the Amazon basin, has been another strong critic of Brazilian mining companies. He heads the Bishops’ Conference’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI in Portuguese) and has witnessed firsthand the impact of mining operations in Indigenous areas.

“Mining represents death for the Indigenous peoples,” he told RNS. “It contaminates their water, opens the door for the consumption of alcohol in their villages, resulting in the rape of women and girls.”

Paloschi cited the case of the Yanomami in the Amazon. Approximately 26,000 members of the Indigenous group have to share their land with an estimated 20,000 workers for illegal mining operations.

The mining spreads diseases such as malaria, thanks to abandoned mining pits that become breeding ponds for mosquitoes. Rapes and homicides have become more common. The rivers have been contaminated with mercury, and the heavy machines used by the invaders drive away animals the Yanomami depend on for hunting.

CIMI and other civic organizations have been protesting against a bill introduced by President Jair Bolsonaro in 2020, currently under consideration in Congress. The bill proposes to legalize mining and other industrial activities in Indigenous territories, which current legislation forbids. 

Bolsonaro’s bill would contribute to the further deforestation and destruction of natural habitats, activists argue, given that Indigenous territories now serve as sanctuaries.

Paloschi believes that most Brazilian Catholics do not understand how extensive deforestation in the Amazon is, or the full implications.

“Brazil is a country that bears the marks of slavery and of the colonial system. Many people think that the Indigenous’ way of living is not right. We still have a long way to go in the church in order to become conscious about the need to protect God’s garden,” he reflected.

VATICAN CITY — Poverty and inequality, which are major factors in child labor exploitation, must be addressed, Pope Francis said in a written message.

“Sadly, too many small hands are busy plowing fields, working in mines, traveling great distances to draw water and doing work that prevents them from attending school, to say nothing of the crime of child prostitution, which is robbing millions of children of the joy of their youth and their God given dignity,” the pope wrote in a message to a global conference against child labor.

“Since poverty is, in fact, the chief factor that exposes children to labor exploitation, I am confident that your deliberations will not fail to address the structural causes of global poverty and the scandalous inequality that continues to exist among the members of the human family,” the pope told conference participants.

Pope Francis’ message was addressed to Guy Ryder, director-general of the International Labor Organization, on the occasion of the fifth Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labor being held May 15-20 in Durban, South Africa. Archbishop Peter B. Wells, apostolic nuncio of South Africa, read the pope’s message to the assembly May 16.

Sending his “warm greetings and prayerful good wishes” to those attending the conference, the pope said he hoped the conference would raise awareness and promote a commitment to combating the problem of child labor.

“While significant progress has been made in eliminating the scourge of child labor from society, this tragedy has been worsened by the impact of the global health crisis and the spread of extreme poverty in many parts of our world where the lack of decent work opportunities for adults and adolescents, migration and humanitarian emergencies condemn millions of young girls and boys to a life of economic and cultural impoverishment,” he wrote.

Pope Francis wrote that he hoped the conference would lead to greater commitment from relevant leaders and international and national organizations in “working to find appropriate and effective ways of protecting the dignity and rights of children, especially through the promotion of social protection systems and access to education on the part of all.”

“The way we relate to children, the extent to which we respect their innate human dignity and fundamental rights, expresses what kind of adults we are and want to be and what kind of society we want to build,” he wrote.

The Vatican is committed to working in ways that help the international community persevere in its efforts to fight child labor exploitation “so that children will be able to enjoy the beauty of this stage of life, while also cultivating dreams for a bright future,” the pope wrote.

The World Day Against Child Labor will be marked June 12 and have the theme “Universal Social Protection to End Child Labor.”

A report released by the International Labor Organization and UNICEF in 2021 estimated some 160 million children — almost one in 10 — worldwide were caught up in forced child labor, an increase of 8.4 million children over the previous four years.

The report said it found “a significant rise in the number of children aged 5 to 11 years in child labor, who now account for just over half of the total global figure.” The number of children aged 5 to 17 years who were involved in work that is hazardous to their health, safety or morals had “risen by 6.5 million to 79 million since 2016.”