The Cardinal of Paraguay, Adalberto Martínez Flores, warned this Sunday about the disappearances of children, adolescents and young people in his country, which he feared are linked to the crime of human trafficking, while calling on politicians and public and private officials to “Really” the people hurt them.
In his first mass on Paraguayan soil after being invested as a cardinal in the consistory headed by Pope Francis in Rome on August 27, Martínez delivered his homily before around 6,000 people who came to the Bañado of the impoverished neighborhood of Tacumbú, in the south from the city, near the Paraguay River.
“Our confinement and individualism often lead us to indifference to certain dramas experienced by many families and homes that have their loved ones, girls, boys, adolescents and young people missing and whose whereabouts and fate are unknown, or have a tragic ending. », assured the also Metropolitan Archbishop of Asunción from the Felipe y Santiago parish, of which the Spanish priest Pedro Velasco is a part.
In this context, he referred to the case of José Miguel Ozuna, a 12-year-old boy living in a neighborhood of Asunción, whose disappearance was reported more than two months ago by his family. For a couple of days, the authorities have been trying to establish whether a body found on the banks of the river corresponds to the child.
«What happened to José Miguel? asked the Catholic hierarch. What happened to little Juliet, better known as Yuyú? She has been missing for more than two years. And, according to sources from the National Police, there are hundreds of other cases of disappearances, especially minors.
In this sense, he pointed out that the Public Ministry and the Police, among others, have the obligation to investigate the disappearances of people and determine their whereabouts, but he also pointed out that society “cannot be indifferent to this scourge” and warned that many cases of disappearances “could be linked to the crime of human trafficking.”
On the other hand, he exhorted those who dedicate themselves to politics and occupy positions of responsibility in public and private institutions «that society, the people, the lives of the poor really hurt and that they work decisively for the common good and for the integral human promotion of all those who inhabit the homeland.
He considered, in this context, “urgent and necessary to solve the structural causes of poverty”, and stated that assistance plans, “which address certain emergencies, should only be thought of as temporary responses, necessary, but temporary.”
“A more just and equitable society, where the common good prevails, is the task of politics and politicians,” settled Martínez, who recalled in his message that more than 2,500 families, some 11,000 people, live in that part of the marshes of Asunción “with their dreams and hopes (….) even in the midst of so many shortcomings”. EFE
