VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has asked an Italian nun, who has
been on the frontlines in the fight against human trafficking, to write this
year's Way of the Cross meditations.
Consolata Sister Eugenia Bonetti, 80, will prepare the texts for
the evening service April 19, Good Friday, at Rome's Colosseum, Alessandro
Gisotti, interim director of the Vatican press office, said April 5.
Gisotti said, "The suffering of many people who are victims
of human trafficking will be the central theme of the meditations," which
are meant to help participants walk in Christ's footsteps and reflect on
today's sins and sufferings, and how Christians should respond.
Each year, the pope asks a different person to write the
commentary and prayers.
Sister Bonetti is a leader among religious women working against
human trafficking. She started and led anti-trafficking initiatives for the
Italian Union of Major Superiors and helped educate officials in Italy and the
United States about the problem.
The Italian religious superiors' anti-trafficking office she set
up trains and connects religious congregations and other people around the
world to provide victim support and services as well as prevent trafficking by
helping people, in their home countries, who are vulnerable to being
trafficked.
She was honored by the U.S. Department of State in 2004 with its
"Trafficking in Persons Hero Award" for her work, and in 2007 she was
given the State Department's "Woman of Courage" award for helping
"create transformative change" and setting "a positive example
for emerging women leaders worldwide." In 2014, she received Italy's
highest honor when Italian President Giorgio Napolitano bestowed on her the
Order of Merit.
Currently, Sister Bonetti is president of the Italian
association, "Slaves No More," which focuses on helping rebuild the
lives of women and children forced into the sex trade and those who are victims
of other forms of abuse, violence and discrimination.
In 2013, she asked Pope Francis to help raise greater awareness
in the church about the problem of human trafficking by establishing a
worldwide day of prayer and fasting.
"The pope was very interested in our suggestion and asked us
what date we would like the day to be," Sister Bonetti said at the time. They
told him to make it Feb. 8 — the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese
slave who found freedom in Italy and became a nun in the late 19th century.
The next year, Pope Francis asked the international unions of
superiors general of men's and women's religious orders to promote the initiative.
The International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking was
first celebrated Feb. 8, 2015.
When talking in 2014 about her two decades of fighting
trafficking, Sister Bonetti said the only way to help victims or people at risk
is to go to them and make "direct contact," which is why she and her
community hit the streets of Rome late at night and speak to foreign women who
have been trafficked into prostitution.
"We tell them there is an alternative" and that they
can be free, she said.
"We enter into communion with them, without judgment,
without condemning them, trying to really understand their situation and lend a
hand," she said.