Consolata Sister Eugenia Bonetti has said that being asked to write this year’s Way of the Cross meditations is an opportunity “to bring out the problem of trafficking, to make people understand how much pain we cause for our indifference".
Sister Bonetti, a long-time activist in the fight against human trafficking, will prepare the texts for the Good Friday evening service on 19 April at Rome's Colosseum, the Vatican announced on 5 April. Each year, Pope Francis asks a different person to write the commentary and prayers.
Speaking to Vatican News shortly after the announcement, Sister Bonetti, aged 80 said: “After an initial moment of embarrassment, I realised that it could be a great opportunity, not for me, but for the many people we have known in so many years, we have helped, we are helping, people with whom we shared an ordeal. It will be an opportunity to bring out the problem of trafficking, to make people understand how much pain we cause for our indifference.”
Sister Bonetti has spent much of her career working against human trafficking, and 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.
She told Vatican News, that despite having lived in Africa for 24 years, the "hardest, most humiliating and most burning mission" has been living in her own country, in Italy.
She said that despite calling itself "a Christian country, Catholic" Italy had “great human shortcomings”. She said people focussed on “well-being and career without realising that these things empty the heart."
"A heart should be full of mercy, should be able to see the suffering of others and not cause more,” she said.
"Christ still suffers today on the streets of our cities. He died for us, but to give us the gift of the Resurrection", she said.
In her meditations for the Way of the Cross, Sr Bonetti said she will try to express the broken dreams of those who have left their country in search of a better life, to help their families, and instead have found criminals who exploit them.
"Their cross is heavy", she concludes, "we want to join them, to support them, but above all to break the links of this chain of exploitation."
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