Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

Child labour, in its intolerable forms, constitutes a kind of violence that is less obvious than others but it is not for this reason any less terrible.^{639Cf. John Paul II, Message for the 1996 World Day of Peace, 5: AAS 88 (1996), 106-107.} This is a violence that, beyond all political, economic and legal implications, remains essentially a moral problem. Pope Leo XIII issued the warning: “in regard to children, great care should be taken not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently developed. For, just as very rough weather destroys the buds of spring, so does too early an experience of life's hard toil blight the young promise of a child's faculties, and render any true education impossible”.^{640Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum: Acta Leonis XIII, 11 (1892), 129.} After more than a hundred years, the blight of child labour has not yet been overcome. Even with the knowledge that, at least for now, in certain countries the contribution made by child labour to family income and the national economy is indispensable, and that in any event certain forms of part-time work can prove beneficial for children themselves, the Church's social doctrine condemns the increase in “the exploitation of children in the workplace in conditions of veritable slavery”.^{641John Paul II, Message for the 1998 World Day of Peace, 6: AAS 90 (1998), 153.} This exploitation represents a serious violation of human dignity, with which every person, “no matter how small or how seemingly unimportant in utilitarian terms”,^{642John Paul II, Message to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the occasion of the World Summit for Children (22 September 1990): AAS 83 (1991), 360.} is endowed.