Future pope set up trafficking commission for vulnerable in Chiclayo

ROME (CNS) -- Before he was Pope Leo XIV, then-Bishop Robert F. Prevost of Chiclayo, Peru, created a commission to help women escape forced prostitution, said a trafficking survivor who worked with him.

Silvia Teodolinda Vázquez, 52, told the Argentine newspaper, La Nacion, she met Pope Leo when he created a diocesan commission on human migration and trafficking in persons in 2017.

Saying she affectionately called him "padrecito," or "Padre Rober," Vázquez told La Nacion in an interview May 17, "The day I met him he said something very beautiful to me."

They had wrapped up a meeting about the commission's work, she said, and "he approached me and, with that warm tone of voice he has, said, 'Silvia, I know this job is very hard for you because of everything you've been through when you were young. I am so grateful for what you are doing for these girls, and I bless you.' It was very moving."

The pope set up the commission, which is still active, in 2017 to bring lay people, religious men and women, and parishes together to help defend and provide assistance to vulnerable migrants, refugees and victims of trafficking. He was the driving force behind all of their work, she said.

Then-Bishop Prevost was concerned about the connection between the huge flow of Venezuelan migrants into Peru and the increasing numbers of sex workers, so he met with members of the Sisters of the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, who were active in assisting women forced into prostitution, and he asked them to join the commission he was forming, Vázquez told La Nacion.

The sisters had long been active in the fight against human trafficking and offered women ways to support themselves free from exploitation; the congregation was honored in 2005 by the U.S. State Department's TIP Award for its work.

Vázquez, a survivor of sexual abuse, human trafficking and forced prostitution, said one of the sisters repeatedly reached out to her, helping her find shelter and a new job. "I am eternally grateful to (the sisters) because thanks to them, I was able to get ahead and become who I am today. They were my second mothers," she said.

She then spent 15 years working with the sisters, providing health education to sex workers and promoting workshops offering alternative trades. That was how she met Bishop Prevost, she said.

The sisters spent years working with the commission until they had to close their convent in Chiclayo and return to Lima. Bishop Prevost's commission then took over the sisters' work in assisting victims of trafficking, which is how Vázquez started working directly with the commission, La Nacion reported.

Vázquez and others walk the streets and go to bars, where they get permission from the bar owners to talk to the women, she said.

"The first thing we ask them is how they are and what they need," she said. She also gives out her phone number, "and many of them call me when they want to talk or need something."

The commission also built, with the help of the Vincentians and Caritas, a St. Vincent de Paul shelter outside Chiclayo for the women, she said. More than 5,000 people have come through the shelter, most of them migrants from Venezuela.

The future Pope Leo supported all of the commission's efforts and would organize spiritual retreats for trafficking victims and sex workers, "which were very well attended at the time," Vázquez said. He would celebrate Mass and hear confessions at the retreats, too.

"We coordinated everything with him," she said. The commission gave him monthly reports on its work, "which included everything from talking to the girls at brothels and bars to offer them help and job opportunities, to helping them regularize their immigration status and assisting them with treatment for illnesses and clothing for their children."

The new pope is "gentle, very caring and has a very nice way of treating people," she said.

When she saw who had been elected pope May 8, she "cried with joy," she said. She had gone to a neighbor's to watch the announcement on TV, and "my neighbor didn't understand. I told her I knew the pope very well. I had to show her the photos for her to believe me!"