For a fourth time, people around the world will commemorate the anniversary of history’s deadliest garment industry disaster. On April 24, 2013, near Dhaka in Bangladesh, the eight-story Rana Plaza building collapsed taking the lives of 1,134 workers and injuring more than 2,500. Littered among the rubble were labels for American brands, as much of the clothing produced there was destined for the United States. At the time, Pope Francis remarked, “Living on 38 euros ($50) a month – that was the pay of these people who died. That is called slave labor.”

The Human Thread offers the following prayer service as a way to commemorate the tragic events at Rana Plaza. We do not simply mourn those who died. We see that it calls us to something new. We will only know an abiding joy when our guilt and overwhelming unease yields to a compassionate solidarity with those whom we have exploited. To lament is to wrestle with difficult questions through suffering and conversion. Gradually, we become more aware of our complicity in the violence of global supply chains and no longer seek to hide it. Our exultant Easter Alleluias can only be born of Good Friday’s lamentation.

Hence, we hope that you will find this prayer service helpful and fitting for remembering those who lost their lives at Rana Plaza: http://www.humanthreadcampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/RanaPlaza.pdf