He has been offering his prayers and solidarity to those who work at sea and have been prevented from going ashore or have not been able to work.

In a video message last month Francis gave a special message to seafarers and people who fish for a living.

He said: "in these past months, your lives and your work have seen significant changes; you have had to make, and are continuing to make, many sacrifices.

"Long periods spent aboard ships without being able to disembark, separation from families, friends and native countries, fear of infection — all these things are a heavy burden to bear, now more than ever."

Francis's prayers and concerns are similar to those of Antonio Guterres, who is the secretary-general of the United Nations.

Last month he issued an appeal asking governments to classify seafarers as "essential workers". This way, those blocked on ships in port could go ashore and new crews could rotate in to keep the sea shipping industry going.

"The ongoing crisis is having a direct impact on the shipping industry, which transports more than 80 percent of traded goods — including vital medical supplies, food and other basic necessities — critical for the COVID-19 response and recovery," a U.N. statement says.

The COVID-related travel restrictions have affected hundreds of thousands of the world's two million seafarers. They have been "stranded at sea for months," Guterres says.

In late April, an International Labor Organization report said 90,000 seafarers were stuck on cruise ships. The ships have had no passengers because of the COVID-19 travel restrictions. Restrictions are so tight that in some ports not even seafarers in need of medical attention were allowed to go to onshore hospitals.

The report also noted that on other ships, shipping companies are forbidding crews from disembarking in case they bring the often-deadly virus on board when they return.

Expressing gratitude to seafarers and fishers for their work, Francis says they are not alone and are not forgotten.

"Your work at sea often keeps you apart from others, but you are close to me in my thoughts and prayers and in those of your chaplains and the volunteers of Stella Maris," the centers around the world run by the Apostleship of the Sea.

"Today I would like to offer you a message and a prayer of hope, comfort and consolation in the face of whatever hardships you have to endure," the pope said. "I would also offer a word of encouragement to all those who work with you in providing pastoral care for maritime personnel."

"May the Lord bless each of you, your work and your families," the pope said, "and may the Virgin Mary, Star of the Sea, protect you always."

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image:ABC News

"We enjoy the goods and services they bring us all our waking hours, but we do not know what some suffer for us to do so," said Father Jeffrey Drane, writing in the Marist Messenger.

"A tough life is precisely the way it is for the 1.6 million seafarers globally," he says.

Drane is the national director of Stella Maris, The Apostleship of the Sea.

He says the recent pandemic and its significant fallouts on the world trade and logistics served to accelerate what had already begun within the industry from the slow economic recession.

"Most noticeable this last year has been the increased exploitation and abuse of seafarers in the expanding cruise industry."

The large numbers involved make detection more difficult.

"But we did notice feeble interest by ownership and port authorities in providing seafarers Wi-Fi access to families or granting shore leave, and in allowing adequate rest or safer workplaces," Dane said.

"Pushing hours of work at minimal cost to maximise profit is the age-old problem of being part of a workforce like this.

As well, there is no one particular set of laws or standards and policing is a real problem when ships are outside territorial waters.

Drane said even though it is slightly easier for Stella Maris volunteers to advocate against illegal employment practices, it is much harder to detect neglect of seafarer wellbeing.

Detection is especially tricky with mental health, workplace conflict or disregard for human dignity when in stressful conditions at sea.

Health and safety failures are far from reducing significantly despite the mandates behind international laws or reduction in the actual numbers of seafarers and fishers due to automation.

This Sunday, 12 July, is Sea Sunday; a good day to remember all seafarers and to offer them our support.

Click here to donate to Apostleship of the Sea

Source

• maristmessenger.co.nz
• aos.0rg.nz
• wn.catholic.org.nz
• Image: aos.org.nz

The two of them had been on a cruise to celebrate their anniversary, he told Badeaux, and it was during dinner one evening that they spotted the priest. They'd asked him to join them, and in introducing themselves, they shared that the wife was dying. The cruise was an item they were crossing off her "bucket list."

Later in the cruise, they met the priest again — when they called him to their cabin because the wife was near death. And that was what the widower wanted Badeaux to know.

"He called and told me it was beautiful that her faith was there for her," Badeaux recalled.

"Her faith was there for her in the middle of the ocean."

As secretary general of Apostleship of the Sea USA, it is Badeaux's job to ensure that cruise passengers' and crewmembers' faith is there for them while at sea. The "Cruise Ship Priest Program" screens and vets potential cruise-ship chaplains and works with partner cruise lines to place a Catholic chaplain on their ships. (AOS-USA is not to be confused with the Vatican's Apostleship of the Sea, which falls under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants, Refugees and Travelers.)

Cruise chaplains are quick to point out that they are continuing the missionary work of the early Church.

"It's a great thing the passengers can get a Mass — but they're generally going to be home in 11 days," points out Father Sinclair Oubre. The diocesan director for Apostleship of the Sea for the Diocese of Beaumont, Texas, he has gone to sea as a merchant sailor for 20 of his last 30 summer vacations.

"For me personally, [this ministry is] for the crewmembers who may be [at sea] six to nine months. Our interest in this grew out of a desire to bring the Eucharist and the sacraments of the Church to seafarers — and we could do that by offering service to the cruise lines, having Mass on board for the passengers." Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Elisabeth Deffner, who writes from Orange, California in National Catholic Register
• Image: Catholic Travel Blog

The schools - St Leo's, Devonport; St Joseph's, Otahuhu; St Joseph's, Orakei and St Mary's, Ellerslie - made hundreds of hand-crafted Christmas cards for seafarers.

These were given out on ships berthed in Auckland just before and after Christmas by chaplains from the Auckland International Seafarers Centre.

Auckland Apostleship of the Sea chaplain Dr Michael Otto said the cards were very well received by the seafarers, who hailed from many nations.

"Many of the cards noted that the seafarers were away from their families at Christmas," Dr Otto said.

"And many children wrote hoping that the seafarers would see their loved ones again soon. A lot of cards included promises by children that they would pray for the seafarers."

It is common for seafarers to work long contracts and to be away from their families for up to 9 months at a time.

Dr Otto said the cards let the seafarers know that they are neither invisible nor forgotten by Kiwis at Christmas.

One Russian duty officer on a ship berthed in Auckland described the cards as "beautiful, just beautiful", Dr Otto said.

The cards featured a variety of Christmas designs, with Kiwiana, nautical themes and summer scenes prevalent.

"It was clear that a lot of thought, time and effort had gone into making the cards," Dr Otto said.
The seafarers and the chaplains and volunteers at the seafarers centre are very grateful to the schools for their kindness and thoughtfulness, he added.

The initiative for schools to make the cards came from the Auckland International Seafarers Centre chairman, Captain Chris Barradale

Source

Supplied

Seven months later, his body was sent home in a wooden coffin: jet black from having been kept in a fish freezer aboard a ship for more than a month, missing an eye and his pancreas, and covered in cuts and bruises, which an autopsy report later concluded had been inflicted before death.

"Sick and resting," said a note taped to his body. Handwritten in Chinese by the ship's captain, it stated only that Mr. Andrade, 31, had fallen ill in his sleep.

Mr. Andrade, who died in February 2011, and nearly a dozen other men in his village had been recruited by an illegal "manning agency," tricked with false promises of double the actual wages and then sent to an apartment in Singapore, where they were locked up for weeks, according to interviews and affidavits taken by local prosecutors.

While they waited to be deployed to Taiwanese tuna ships, several said, a gatekeeper demanded sex from them for assignments at sea.

Once aboard, the men endured 20-hour workdays and brutal beatings, only to return home unpaid and deeply in debt from thousands of dollars in upfront costs, prosecutors say.

Thousands of maritime employment agencies around the world provide a vital service, supplying crew members for ships, from small trawlers to giant container carriers, and handling everything from paychecks to plane tickets.

While many companies operate responsibly, over all the industry, which has drawn little attention, is poorly regulated.

The few rules on the books do not even apply to fishing ships, where the worst abuses tend to happen, and enforcement is lax.

Illegal agencies operate with even greater impunity, sending men to ships notorious for poor safety and labor records; instructing them to travel on tourist or transit visas, which exempt them from the protections of many labor and anti-trafficking laws; and disavowing them if they are denied pay, injured, killed, abandoned or arrested at sea. Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times, from an article by New York Times reporter Ian Urbina.
• Image: Nick Grono

"Go down!" yelled a knife-wielding crew member, forcing two Tanzanian stowaways overboard and onto the raft. As angry clouds gathered on the horizon, he cut the line.

Gambling on a better life, the stowaways had run out of luck. They had already spent nine days at sea, most of the time hiding in the Dona Liberta's engine room, crouched deep in oily water.

But as they climbed down onto the slick raft, the men, neither of whom knew how to swim, nearly slid into the ocean before lashing themselves together to the raft with a rope.

As the Dona Liberta slowly disappeared, David George Mndolwa, one of the abandoned pair, recalled thinking: "This is the end."

Few places on the planet are as lawless as the high seas, where egregious crimes are routinely committed with impunity.

Though the global economy is ever more dependent on a fleet of more than four million fishing and small cargo vessels and 100,000 large merchant ships that haul about 90 percent of the world's goods, today's maritime laws have hardly more teeth than they did centuries ago when history's great empires first explored the oceans' farthest reaches.

Murders regularly occur offshore — thousands of seafarers, fishermen or sea migrants die under suspicious circumstances annually, maritime officials say — but culprits are rarely held accountable.

No one is required to report violent crimes committed in international waters.

Through debt or coercion, tens of thousands of workers, many of them children, are enslaved on boats every year, with only occasional interventions.

On average, a large ship sinks every four days and between 2,000 and 6,000 seamen die annually, typically because of avoidable accidents linked to lax safety practices. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• The New York Times

As ports are built far away from the cities and because of the fast turnaround in loading and unloading the cargo, the crews sailing the ships are like "invisible" people.

As individuals we do not acknowledge the importance and the benefits that the maritime profession brings to our life and we become aware of their work and sacrifices only when disasters strike.

In spite of the technological development that makes life on board more comfortable and easier communicating with their loved ones, the seafarers are forced to spend long months in a restricted space, away from their families.

Restrictive and unjust regulations often limit shore leave when in port and the continuous threat of piracy in many sea routes adds stress while sailing.

We are still confident that the ratification and coming into force of the Maritime Labor Convention 2006 by a growing number of countries, accompanied by effective inspections by flag States, will result in a tangible improvement of the labor and working conditions on board all ships.

With the present day situation of war, violence and political instability in several countries, a new phenomenon has been affecting the shipping industry.

Since last year, with the coast guards and the naval forces of Italy, Malta and European Union, merchant vessels transiting in the Mediterranean Sea have been actively involved in what is the daily occurrence of rescuing thousands and thousands of migrants trying to reach mainly the coasts of Italy in any kind of overcrowded and substandard craft.

Since time immemorial seafarers have fulfilled the obligation to rescue people in distress at sea under any conditions.

However, as it has been stressed by other maritime organizations, merchant vessels rescuing migrants at sea brings a health, safety and security risk for seafarers.

Commercial ships are designed to transport goods (containers, oil, gas, etc.) and all the facilities (accommodation, kitchen, bathroom, lavatories, etc.) are custom-made for the limited number of crew members on board.

For these reasons merchant vessels are not equipped to provide assistance to a large number of migrants.

Seafarers are professionally qualified in their work and trained to handle a number of emergency situations but rescuing hundreds of men, women and children acting frantically while trying to reach the safety of the ship, is something that no training course in maritime school has prepared them for.

Furthermore, the physical effort in doing everything conceivable to rescue as many persons as possible, and sometimes the view of numerous lifeless bodies floating on the sea, are a traumatic experience which leaves the crews exhausted and psychologically distressed needing specific psychological and spiritual support.

On Sea Sunday as the Catholic Church we would like to express our appreciation to the seafarers in general for their vital contribution to the international trade.

This year in particular, we would like to recognize the great humanitarian effort done by the crews of merchant vessels that without hesitation, sometimes risking their own life, have engaged in many rescue operations saving thousands of migrants' lives.

Our gratitude goes also to all the chaplains and volunteers of the Apostleship of the Sea for their daily commitment in serving the people of the sea; their presence in the docks is the sign of the Church in their midst and shows the compassionate and merciful face of Christ.

In conclusion, while we are appealing to the governments in Europe and in the countries of origin of migration flows, as well as to the international organizations to cooperate in searching for a durable and definite political solution to the instability in those countries, we would like also to call for more resources to be committed not only for search and rescue missions but also to prevent the trafficking and exploitation of persons escaping from conditions of conflict and poverty.

• Cardinal Antonio Maria Vegliò, President
• Archbishop Joseph Kalathiparambil, Secretary

Sources

• Vatican Radio
• Image: Apostleship of the Sea UK

This world of the sea, with the continuous migration of people today, must take into account the complex effects of globalization and, unfortunately, must come to grips with situations of injustice, especially when the freedom of a ship's crew to go ashore is restricted, when they are abandoned altogether along with the vessels on which they work, when they risk piracy at sea and the damage of illegal fishing.

'The vulnerability of seafarers, fishermen and sailors calls for an even more attentive solicitude on the Church's part and should stimulate the motherly care that, through you, she expresses to all those whom you meet in ports and on ships or whom you help on board during those long months at sea'.

These words were addressed by Pope Benedict XVI to the participants of the XXIII AoS Congress held in the Vatican City, November 19-23, 2012.

As a matter of fact, for more than 90 years the Catholic Church, through the Work of the Apostleship of the Sea with its network of chaplains and volunteers in more than 260 ports of the world, has shown her motherly care by providing spiritual and material welfare to seafarers, fishers and their families.

As we celebrate Sea Sunday, we would like to invite every member of our Christian communities to become aware and recognize the work of an estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million seafarers who at any time are sailing in a globalized worldwide fleet of 100,000 ships carrying 90 per cent of the manufactured goods.

Very often, we do not realize that the majority of the objects we use in our daily life are transported by ships criss-crossing the oceans. Multinational crews experience complex living and working conditions on board, months away from their loved ones, abandonment in foreign ports without salaries, criminalization and natural (storms, typhoons, etc.) and human (pirates, shipwreck, etc.) calamities. Continue reading

Sources

• Vatican Information Services
• Image: Sunshine and Sails
• Apostleship of the Sea NZ (Inc)

Away from family and friends for many months at a time, working long hours and navigating some of the world's most dangerous stretches of ocean, seafaring can be a tough, lonely and hazardous career.

Piracy, shipwreck, abandonment and separation from loved ones are just a few of the problems that seafarers and fishers cope with.

Fishers are involved in what is recognised as the most dangerous occupation in the world.

Seafarers transport 90 to 95% of the food and goods the world uses every day, and yet these 1.3 million hardworking men and women who face danger every day are often forgotten.

When aircraft crash we hear about it on the news; when ships sink, unless it's a cruise liner like the Costa Concordia, it's almost as if no one cares.

Shipwrecks and Piracy

Wikipedia lists 67 ships as ‘sunk, foundered, grounded or otherwise lost' in 2012. Twenty-five of those shipwrecks resulted in the loss of at least 943 lives, and probably many more.

Seafarers are constantly threatened by pirates. Between January and 23 May this year, there were 106 incidents reported of ships being attacked, including four hijackings and Somali pirates were holding 71 hostages and 5 vessels.

During 2012 297 ships were attacked by pirates, 174 were boarded, 28 were hijacked and 28 were fired upon. The number of people taken hostage onboard was 585 and a further 26 were kidnapped for ransom in Nigeria. Six crew members were killed and 32 were injured or assaulted. (Information from http://www.icc-ccs.org/)

Stella Maris — an official Ministry of the Church

Under the guidance and protection of Mary, Star of the Sea, the Apostleship of the Sea (AoS) cares for the fishers and seafarers that visit our ports.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, AoS ministers to those who work at sea and in our ports in Auckland, Wellington, Tauranga Moana and Napier. It is in the process opening or re-opening branches in other NZ ports. Continue reading

Sources

• Marist Messenger
• Image: Apostleship of the Sea GB