International: Six Million Slaves

“Red Pope” of the Roman Catholic Church is that most puissant Cardinal in charge of its vast foreign missions—the prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of Faith. Present “Red Pope” is Pietro Cardinal Fumasoni-Biondi, bald, round-faced Roman who from 1922 to 1933 was Apostolic Delegate in Washington, D. C. In pious sorrow last week the Cardinal-Prefect reminded the world that today no less than 6,000,000 people still live in slavery. He called Catholic attention to “the importance of the Church anti-slavery program as enunciated by Pope Leo XIII”—who in 1888 exhorted his Brazilian bishops to banish slavery from their country in an encyclical flaying “the accursed pest of servitude” and ordering an annual anti-slavery collection taken in Catholic churches.

Cardinal Fumasoni-Biondi’s press bureau amplified his statements by pointing out that the world’s 6,000,000 slaves are in Ethiopia, Liberia, China and Moslem nations; that 2,000 slaves a year are taken from Africa across the Red Sea to be sold in Arabia.