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Though it’s almost grotesque to speak about “celebrity” in the context of something so tragic as human trafficking, if there is a celebrity in the fight against modern-day forms of slavery that involve an estimated 21 million victims and $32 billion annually in illegal profits, it’s an Italian Catholic nun by the name of Sister Eugenia Bonetti.
A Consolata sister, Bonetti has been featured in documentaries and won both the International Women of Courage Prize from the U.S. State Department and the European Citizens’ Prize from the E.U.
She’s met presidents and prime ministers, spoken to high-level conferences all around the world, and become the face of the anti-trafficking push.
For all that, Bonetti has never lost contact with the concrete human beings who are at the core of her campaign.
Every Saturday, she and a group of sisters from various religious orders visit the immigrant welcome center of Ponte Galeria on the peripheries of Rome, where many young women await work visas and passports and often become prey to human traffickers.
“Between 2015 and 2016 nearly 15,000 Nigerian women have arrived in Italy,” Bonetti said in an interview with Crux. “Where are they?” she asked.
Answering her own question, she said, “They are on our streets.”
According to government data, between 50 and 70 thousand women in Italy are victims of human trafficking and forced to prostitute themselves for as little as the equivalent of $12.
Bonetti has been there since the very beginning, when after her 24 years as a missionary in Kenya she was called back to the small northern Italian town of Turin in 1993, which was then experiencing the onset of the migrant crisis.
“When I returned to Italy, I saw the women that I had met in Africa, once filled with life, joy and desire to live and think about the future, living on the streets,” Bonetti said.
“I too, in the beginning, thought they were there because they wanted to be there, because they wanted to earn money.
“That wasn’t true! They were there because someone put them there.
“Because someone made a profit from putting them there. And someone else had made a profit from exploiting them, using them and then throwing them back on the street.” Continue reading
Sources
- Crux article by Claire Giangravè, a reporter and editorial assistant at Crux.
- Image: Consolata Missionary Sisters
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