An almost satanic problem

It is an almost satanic problem. On  December 19, 2021, Pope Francis defined the drama of violence against women in this way. “So great is the number of women beaten, abused in the home, even by their husbands. The problem for me is almost satanic” are his exact words, spoken during the television special Francis and the Invisible. The Pope meets the lowly. For indeed it is so. Despite the many and varied advances that the advancement of the female gender has made over the years, women are still “invisible” and “considered lowly” in so many parts of the globe and in so many cultures and societies. Invisible and lowly always, except in the face of violence and abuse. In these vicious categories, women are, unfortunately, at the highest position.

In almost twelve years of his pontificate, Pope Francis has never failed to loudly denounce this drama; indeed, this crime. On many occasions he has reiterated the need to put an end to it and to protect womens’ lives and dignity, by recognising their important social role. In the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, for example, issued in 2016, the Pontiff emphasizes that “the shameful ill-treatment to which women are sometimes subjected, domestic violence and various forms of enslavement which, rather than a show of masculine power, are craven acts of cowardice”.  He adds, “The verbal, physical, and sexual violence that women endure in some marriages contradicts the very nature of the conjugal union. I think of the reprehensible genital mutilation of women practiced in some cultures, but also of their lack of equal access to dignified work and roles of decision-making”.

Numerosi, poi, i discorsi e le omelie di Francesco che contengono riferimenti a questo drammatico tema. Il 1° gennaio di quest”anno, ad esempio, nella messa per la Solennità di Maria Santissima Madre di Dio, nonché 53° Giornata mondiale della pace, il Pontefice chiede a tutto il mondo di «guardare alle madri e alle donne per trovare la pace, per uscire dalle spirali della violenza e dell”odio, e tornare ad avere sguardi umani e cuori che vedono. E ogni società ha bisogno di accogliere il dono della donna, di ogni donna: di rispettarla, custodirla, valorizzarla, sapendo che chi ferisce una sola donna profana Dio, nato da donna».

Francis’ numerous speeches and homilies contain references to this dramatic topic. On  January 1, this year, for example, in the Mass for the Solemnity of Mary Most Holy Mother of God, as well as the 53rd World Day of Peace, the Pontiff asked the whole world to “look to mothers and to women in order to find peace, to emerge from the spiral of violence and hatred, and once more see things with genuinely human eyes and hearts.  Every society needs to accept the gift that is woman, every woman: to respect, defend and esteem women, in the knowledge that whosoever harms a single woman profanes God, who was ‘born of a woman’”.

These words echo those spoken four years earlier, again on the Marian solemnity of the first day of the year. “Women are sources of life. Yet they are continually insulted, beaten, raped, forced to prostitute themselves and to suppress the life they bear in the womb”. ,” says the bishop of Rome. “Every form of violence inflicted upon a woman is a blasphemy against God, who was born of a woman. Humanity’s salvation came forth from the body of a woman: we can understand our degree of humanity by how we treat a woman’s body”. The Pontiff then did not fail to denounce the many, too many times in which “the women’s bodies sacrificed on the profane altars of advertising, of profiteering, of pornography, exploited like a canvas to be used. Yet women’s bodies must be freed from consumerism; they must be respected and honoured. Theirs is the most noble flesh in the world, for it conceived and brought to light the love that has saved us!”

The abuses to which the female gender and humanity are forced are also at the centre of Pope Bergoglio’s speech on  March 11, 2023, when he received in audience the participants at the meeting promoted by the Strategic alliance of catholic research universities and the Centesimus annus pro Pontifice Foundation. “Every person must be respected in their dignity and fundamental rights: education, work, freedom of expression, and so on”, he emphasized. “This is particularly true for women, who are more easily subjected to violence and abuse. [...] For so long the woman has been the first waste material. This is terrible. Every person’s rights must be respected”. His warning, therefore has been strong: “Not to remain silent in the face of this scourge of our times” and not to leave “the women victims of abuse, exploitation, marginalization and undue pressure without a voice. Let us be the voice of their pain and strongly denounce the injustices to which they are subjected, often in contexts that deprive them of any possibility of defence and redemption”.

A few months later - in November 2023 - Pope Bergoglio sent a message to the national campaign against violence against women organized by rai Radio1, Gr1 and Cadmi D.I.Re, entitled A Long Wave Against Male Violence Against Women. Once again on this occasion, the bishop of Rome illuminated, with his words, a tragedy that too often still tends to be hidden or, even worse, treated indifferently, as if it were “normal”. “Violence against women is a poisonous weed that afflicts our society and that must be eradicated from its roots”, says Francis. “And these roots are cultural and mental, they grow in the soil of prejudice, of possession, of injustice. “In too many places and in too many situations women are put in the background, they are considered “inferior”, like objects”, he continues, “and if a person is reduced to a thing, then her dignity is no longer seen, she is considered only property that can be disposed of in everything, even to the point of suppressing her”.

 “Where there is domination there is abuse! It is not love that demands prisoners”, the Pontiff clearly emphasized, calling everyone to the duty and responsibility to listen, to take into consideration “women who are victims of abuse, exploitation, marginalization and undue pressure. Let us not remain indifferent! It is necessary to act immediately, at all levels, with determination, urgency, courage”. Not least because - and Bergoglio wrote this on his @Pontifex account on  November 25, 2022, on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women - “exercising violence against a woman or exploiting her is not a simple crime, it is a crime that destroys the harmony, poetry and beauty that God wanted to give to the world”.

Pope Francis’ predecessors have also addressed the issue of violence against women on several occasions. In 2008, on receiving in audience the participants of the international conference entitled Woman and Man, the Humanum in its Entirety, Benedict XVI stated, “There are places and cultures where women are discriminated against or undervalued simply because they are women, where recourse is even made to religious arguments and family, social and cultural pressures to support the inequality of the sexes, where acts of violence are perpetrated against women by making them the object of mistreatment and exploitation in advertising and in the consumer and entertainment industry”. “In the face of such serious and persistent phenomena”, he continues, “the commitment of Christians appears all the more urgent so that they may become promoters everywhere of a culture that recognizes women, in law and in reality, the dignity they deserve”.

One cannot, then, fail to mention the Letter to Women written by John Paul II in 1995 and of which next year will be the thirtieth anniversary. A “milestone”, we might say, of the contemporary Church’s position on those terrible phenomena that Pope Wojtyła calls “perversions”. “When we look at one of the most sensitive aspects of the situation of women in the world”, he writes,  “how can we not mention the long and degrading history, albeit often an "underground" history, of violence against women in the area of sexuality? At the threshold of the Third Millennium we cannot remain indifferent and resigned before this phenomenon”.

Hence, the Polish Pontiff’s firm warning to “come to condemn vigorously the types of sexual violence which frequently have women for their object and to pass laws which effectively defend them from such violence”. In the same way, John Paul II denounces, “in the name of the respect due to the human person the widespread hedonistic and commercial culture which encourages the systematic exploitation of sexuality and corrupts even very young girls into letting their bodies be used for profit”.

The Message to Women, written by Paul VI on December 8, 1965, is fundamental. Among the concluding documents of the Second Vatican Council, the text is addressed, in particular, to “women on trial”. “You who stand upright under the cross in the image of Mary”, writes Montini, “you who so often in history have given men the strength to fight to the end, to bear witness even to martyrdom, help them once again to rediscover the boldness of great undertakings, together with patience and a sense of humble origins”.

The relevance of that Message - whose 60th anniversary we will celebrate in 2025 - tells us, unfortunately that brutality against women is still a bleeding wound aggravated by the loneliness in which victims often find themselves. Alone in the face of abuses of power, alone in the face of the long and interminable delays of justice, alone in the face of states that do not always manage to provide them with the right support, today more than ever, women must be saved. May the upcoming Jubilee be an opportunity to reflect on this issue as well.

by Isabella Piro
A journalist with “L’Osservatore Romano”

There is only crying

During his trip to Africa in February 2023, the Pope met the victims of violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. With courage and dignity, some women told the Pontiff about the suffering they had endured. Bijoux Mukumbi Kamala was kidnapped by rebels in 2020. She was 17 years old, and for 19 months she was raped “like an animal” by the commander “several times a day, whenever he wanted, for several hours”. When she managed to escape, she was pregnant. “I had twin girls, who will never know their father”. Emelda M’karhungulu was 16 years old in 2005. “I was kept as a sex slave and abused for three months. Every day, five to ten men abused each of us. They made us eat maize paste and the flesh of the men they killed. This was our daily food. Those who refused to eat it were torn to pieces and the others were forced to eat it”.