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7th Pastoral Letter of the Bishop of Acqui

degradation to which women are reduced, along with
infanticide, human sacrifices and slavery.
Almost everywhere outside Christendom a woman does not
have a civil existence, nor honor nor rights nor liberty. She is
the slave of her husband, who has the right to abandon her,
besides imprisoning her, selling her and even killing her. This
unhappy creature, who for us Christians is the noble companion
of man, among pagans is even condemned to be buried alive
with her dead husband, or to being burned on his coffin in order
to show that she does not enjoy her own existence, and that
everything ends for her when her husband ceases to live.
Likewise, almost everywhere, parents presume the right of life
and death over their children; and it is by the thousands that
children die every day, especially in China, thrown into the
rivers or to wild animals. In many areas, such as the islands of
Oceania, human victims are sacrificed on the altars of false
gods, and thus human blood is mixed with the practice of the
most abominable and revolting cult; in some of those tribes, the
mothers themselves are condemned to immolate one of their
own children on the tomb of their spouse. Africa is the main
area where an ignominious hunt for and traffic in human lives is
carried out. How many poor Negroes are sold like horses, and
sometimes cheaper than horses, to cruel masters who subject
them to the most abominable servitude, and then sell them back
to enrich themselves in the most despicable trade!
Can we, the first-born of the Christian society, so happily
privileged, exempt ourselves from the duty to give back to God
so many children who have forgotten his name, his rights, his
attributes, his worship, his divine law; from cooperating in the
substitution of His holy reign for that of the most vulgar and
abominable idols, and in returning to honor those humiliated and
degraded beings that belong to God? Catholic charity gives itself
an easy and efficacious means through the Pious Work of the
Propagation of the Faith.

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