Prato (Italy) : Pope Francis denounced the “cancer” of abusive labour practices during a visit today to the Italian industrial city of Prato, where a 2013 garment factory fire killed seven Chinese workers.
Francis recalled the deaths in off-the-cuff comments to Prato residents gathered in the piazza outside the city’s cathedral. Prato is home to some 40,000 Chinese immigrants, nearly half of them in Italy illegally, and is a major producer of cheap clothes made in largely unregulated factories that often double as dormitories for underpaid workers. Francis said everyone deserves respect, welcome and dignified work.