A Catholic priest stands over the forlorn figure of a young Nigerian girl, murmuring prayers and sprinkling holy water as she sobs.For many of us in the secular community, when we think of religious indoctrination we only see the big three - Judaism, Christianity, Islam. But as I have been chronicling of late, the harm of religion is not just happening within the Abrahamic religions.
Favour*, a 19-year-old, is constantly scratching, her skin is red raw in places. She believes there is a nest of insects living inside her body- and that they will kill her.
The priest is attempting to break a powerful voodoo spell that binds her to her ‘madam’ in Trieste, near the border with Slovenia, for the next five to eight years.
Favour, one of thousands of Nigerian women trafficked to Europe to become sex slaves every year, has been told she owes her female pimp €80,000 for her journey. This will take around 4,000 clients each paying as little as €10 or €20 to pay off.
Although the chains tying her to her madam are only psychological, they are extremely powerful.
In their desperation to break the hold over the girls, many of which are sent on the migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean, the Italians have even resorted to get Catholic priests to perform exorcisms on them.
Although one may look at the following story as bizarre and WTF, an interesting point was brought forth,
From that the response is understandable, although a secular response would be preferableAs Francesca de Masi, a sociologist with the Be Free organisation that works with the trafficked women, explains: ‘Telling them that voodoo isn’t real is presumptuous… it doesn’t take into consideration the context they come from.
‘And it’s counterproductive. It makes them close up and become incommunicative. Whether they believe or not, there are so many reasons to be afraid. The risk that something terrible happens to their family is real.’
Italian priests EXORCISE prostitute Nigerian migrant girls to break voodoo spell | Daily Mail OnlineCounter-magic in the form of a reverse voodoo with Catholic priests performing a kind of exorcism is more convincing, according to Rosanna Paradiso, founder of the Tampep association in Turin that helps girls free themselves and return home.
‘It’s difficult because the jiujiu has such a strong grip. And the women have been told not to trust police or anyone in Europe. But we have called priests to do counter jiujiu. Occasionally it has been proven to work. I saw one girl who had taken to her bed months before, waiting to die, just got out of bed. She was cured.’
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