Papua New Guinea – Sisters struggle against forced marriage and child trafficking
Thursday, April 19, 2012
“Forced marriage is a major problem in Papua New Guinea. Girls are sold when they are only 13 or 14 years old. We want to help to change this tradition.”
This is how Sister Maria del Sagrario described the work of her Institute in the Diocese of Vanimo at a meeting with international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
In that remote and poorly-developed region in the north-west of Papua New Guinea, the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará (SSVM) operate a hostel for young women.
According to Sister Maria del Sagrario, 19 girls between 13 and 19 years of age are living there at present.
They were sent by their parents, who want to protect their daughters from the traditional form of forced marriage.
ACN supports the initiative: the hostel in Vanimo is currently undergoing considerable enlargement because at the moment it does not offer sufficient space for either the girls or the Sisters.
Up till now the Sisters have only had one single room for their use.
In the words of Sister Maria del Sagrario, even today large areas of Papua New Guinea are significantly under-developed. Ancient traditions remain alive, such as the custom of selling underage girls to men for marriage.
Payment is often in the form of pigs or other domestic animals.
This practice is also frequent among the faithful. “Although Christians are numerous, the culture of the country is still far away from the influence of the Gospels,” says Sister Maria.
For the Sisters, there is only one answer to this: Christian education, especially for girls.
The religious Institute, Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará, was founded in Argentina in 1988. Some Matará Sisters lead contemplative lives and devote themselves exclusively to prayer in order to support their fellow Sisters who concern themselves with social, charitable and pastoral initiatives.
Through their withdrawn lifestyle, entirely devoted to serving their neighbors, they seek to remember the women who accompanied Jesus Christ until His death and who kept vigil beneath the Cross.
The Sisters wear a crucifix on their breast which, alongside the figure of the crucified Christ, also displays numerous symbols.
It was carved in the late 1500s by a member of the Matará tribe, native peoples in the north of Argentina in the vicinity of today’s city of Santiago del Estero, who were evangelized by the Jesuits.
At present, 6 Matará Sisters are working in Papua New Guinea.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
.
“Forced marriage is a major problem in Papua New Guinea. Girls are sold when they are only 13 or 14 years old. We want to help to change this tradition.”</i
Change the tradition?
¡Good Grief!
Once you start changing the traditions of marriage you’ll end up with gay marriages and God only knows what all else!
Does Cardinal O’Brian know about this?
“Payment is often in the form of pigs or other domestic animals..”
..Change is traditionally given in the form of weasels.
LikeLike
Yes Toad, there were many barbaric and pagan ‘traditions‘ in use before the advent of Christianity. Even so, of all the religions in the world, the chosen race of the old alliance, Judaism, was the nearest to the Truth. (This is why Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, said He had come not to ‘change’ the law, but to ‘perfect’ it.)
Jesus Christ, Son of God came to show us the Way, the Truth and the Life. Christ shed His Holy Blood on the Cross for our redemption, to save us from Hell that our sins merited. Since His Holy Death and Resurrection and the birth of the Holy Catholic Church at Pentecost, we take our Tradition henceforth from those beginnings.
LikeLike