Celebrating the Eucharist with Prostituted Women: Our Admiration and Hope in Pope Francis
Celebrating the Eucharist with Prostituted Women: Our Admiration and Hope in Pope Francis
We, prostituted women of Cebu, together with the Good Shepherd Welcome House, hail the election of Pope Francis I in the person of Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio.
We are inspired by the information that Cardinal Bergoglio celebrated mass with prostituted women of Argentina. This is a truly touching act that symbolically elevates our dignity as women. We feel that we are welcome to partake in the table of Christ, as co-equal with other faithful.
We have been largely judged by society as the worst of sinners. We are looked down with utmost disdain for our ‘work’ that is considered as “the oldest profession in the world.â€
We are hoping that with Pope Francis's gesture of calling us to the banquet of Christ, society will take the closer examination that the prostitution of women is a sin of society and not of the individuals who are forced by poverty into this dehumanizing means to eke out a living.
Yes, prostitution might be the oldest profession in the world but only because, from the time of Jesus when slavery existed, until our modern times, the treatment of women as commodities and the exploitation of the poor continues to exist.
It is for this reason that we have high hopes in Pope Francis I. We ask him to go beyond celebrating the mass for and with prostituted women. We ask him to look at the inequality of women in the Church, to begin with. We ask him to question the social structures and systems that promote the commodification of women as objects of sex and exploitation.
It is in eliminating the conditions of poverty and exploitation, and emancipating women from the same, that we truly see Jesus come alive in his table of love, justice, and equality.
Sr. Mary Antonietta Go, RGS
Project Coordinator
Good Shepherd Welcome House
Drop-In Center
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