Reflection:

1. The girls who took refuge in Paris did not have a good reputation, as St. Louise said: “At present the priests of Saint-Sulpice are sending for four girls from the refugee center to help our sisters. […] I fear that this mixture will create confusion and much harm, and that it will come from our sisters themselves.” (L. 350).
2. There were many girls who fled from misery and war, seeking work and welcome in Paris. St. Louise did not ignore them, she knew that they were meat, in a sexual sense, for the soldiers: on the contrary, she made shelters to receive them and entrusted the Daughters of Charity to tend to them, looked for others places to rehabilitate them, like the Charity and in the General Hospital.
3. Like the trafficking of blacks from Africa to America in the colonial era, as a large-scale business (acquisition of black slaves in Africa, transfer and sale in America), white trade still exists in the 21st century. It is the illegal trade of women for purposes of labor or sexual exploitation against their will and freedom, against their well-being and their dignity.
4. White trafficking is even more repugnant than the illegal traffic of migrants. This ends with the arrival of the migrants to their destination, while the white trafficking involves the persistent exploitation of the victims in some way to generate illegal profits for the traffickers. From a practical point of view, victims of trafficking are also often more severely affected and more in need of protection than clandestine migrants.
5. The white slave trade is an urgent and powerful cry to the branches of the Vincentian Family. If we are to save the poor, are there poor people more degraded in the mud than these poor women? And it is not too hard to find them. Vincentians, let’s save them!