The Sacred Call to Advocacy

By Ann Scholz, SSND, PhD

Last month, forty-two women religious and their colleagues and advocates from 17 states gathered on Capitol Hill. They came at the invitation of the Alliance and the National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd to encourage Congress to enact legislation to end human trafficking. They came to promote the passage of H.R. 1144, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Act, and S. 1748, the Kids Online Safety Act. They came to attack the root causes of human trafficking, to advocate for justice. They came to answer the call of the Gospel.

Is it possible that advocacy is a calling, a vocation, a sacred responsibility of all people of goodwill?  When viewed through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching (CST), advocacy becomes more than a civic duty; it is a profound response to the call of the Gospel. Advocacy is about standing in solidarity with those who have been exploited or left behind. Pope Francis’s encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, provides a radical roadmap for this sacred journey. It urges advocates to reject the modern “throwaway culture” and instead build a culture of encounter that anchors systemic change in human dignity and community. 

At the heart of this call to be advocates is the foundational CST principle of human dignity. Every person possesses an inherent worth that transcends their economic utility, nationality, or social status. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis warns that a consumerist world blinds us to this: “Some parts of our human family, it appears, can be readily sacrificed for the sake of others” (FT, 18). Advocacy becomes the structural enforcement of dignity, actively dismantling social, economic, and political systems that treat human beings as disposable.

This commitment to human dignity demands a preferential option for the poor, which Fratelli Tutti illustrates through the parable of the Good Samaritan. It challenges us to notice who is left bleeding on the side of the road by globalized indifference, and to observe that “all of us have a responsibility for the wounded” (FT, 79). Faith-filled advocacy is the organized response to that challenge. It gives voice to those on the periphery. Rather than speaking for them, the advocate works to ensure that they are no longer excluded from the table of civic dialogue.

Finally, it is love that drives an advocate to change the institutional conditions that cause human suffering. As we read in Fratelli Tutti, “it is an act of charity to assist someone suffering, but it is also an act of charity… to work to change the social conditions that caused his or her suffering” (FT, 186). Advocacy, therefore, is the highest form of political charity, pursuing the common good by fostering the wellbeing of all.

Advocacy grounded in the Gospel and CST is an expression of love in action. It challenges a fractured world to look past borders of nation, race, and class and to reject the economy that commodifies human beings. Advocacy is not easy; it can be dangerous; it has cost some people their lives.  But those who embrace this vocational call to advocacy participate in a wondrous enterprise—building God’s Beloved Community where love, justice, and compassion prevail.