Cardinal Czerny: Seafarers face ‘injustice, exploitation, and inequality'

On the second Sunday of July every year, the Catholic Church celebrates Sea Sunday, praying and advocating for seafarers. In advance of this year’s celebration, Cardinal Michael Czerny, the head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, has released a message reflecting on the forgotten labour of seafarers. Injustices, exploitation, and inequality Cardinal Czerny begins by noting that the total number of all those involved in the shipping industry – from the crews of the ships to dockworkers, the coastguard to customs agents – is surely in the many millions. It is through the “hidden efforts” of these workers, Czerny writes, that many of our daily necessities reach us. And yet, he says, “Today as well as in the past, seafaring can entail absence from home and land, for months and even years. Both the seafarers and their families may miss significant moments in the other’s life.”