(from our correspondent) At the beginning, the early Christians had accepted slavery as a "de facto situation", even if, specified the deputy president of Ccee, "the ancient Church has never asserted that the enslaved condition descended from the natural order of things". But it is in today’s Europe, highlighted card. Bozanic, "with new dramatic forms of slavery that trample on the right of the human being", that "Christians are called once again to be the witnesses and protagonists of release". Along with the Africans, he concluded, "we have to fight against the culture of death, in favour of a culture of life that promotes dialogue, solidarity and love". In the eventual debate, card. Theodore Sarr, archbishop of Dakar, in Senegal, agreed that "the challenge is accepting the historical aspect that the Church failed to face, paying lots of attention to all those forms of modern slavery which we do not realise yet but which somehow or other offend the dignity of the human being".
