Before becoming Pope Leo XIV, then-Bishop Robert Francis Prevost of Chiclayo, Peru, created a commission to help women escape forced prostitution, according to a trafficking survivor who worked with him, Silvia Teodolinda Vasquez.
The woman, 52, told the Argentine daily La Nacion Friday that she met Pope Leo XIII when, in 2017, he created a diocesan commission on human migration and human trafficking.
Then-Bishop Prevost was concerned about the connection between the huge influx of Venezuelan migrants into Peru and the growing number of sex workers, so he met with the Sisters of the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, who worked to help women forced into prostitution, and asked them to join the commission he was forming, Vázquez told the paper.
The sisters had long been active in the fight against human trafficking and offered women ways to support themselves by breaking free from exploitation; the congregation had even been honored with a U.S.
State Department award for its work in 2005.
