Michele Raviart and Debora Donnini – Vatican City

Three white candles with red stripes, to symbolize the blood shed for the violence suffered, placed at the foot of an Easter candle, symbol of the resurrection. So yesterday evening many faithful wanted to remember with a Eucharistic celebration in the church of Santa Lucia in Rome the three women killed on November 17 last year in the Della Vittoria district of Rome, a few hundred meters from the parish, and all the victims of trafficking. Three women, two of Chinese nationality and one of Colombian nationality, victims of both sexual exploitation and their killer. “Three absurd deaths, three broken lives”, said the parish priest of Santa Lucia Don Alessandro Zenobbi, one of the twelve concelebrants, “They are daughters, sisters, grandchildren, they are women who have lost everything, their dignity, their very life” .

A rose not to forget the victims

Even if the identity of all the victims is not yet known, the names have been pronounced in their memory: Marta, Sofia, Lia. When we listened to them, he recounts Sister Maria Rosa Venturelli, Comboni Sister and coordinator of the USMI anti-trafficking network in Rome, “we felt their presence among us, even if perhaps they didn’t have the same faith as us. But surely they are in the eternal life of the Father”.

At the end of the Mass, Monsignor Baldo Reina, auxiliary bishop of the western sector of Rome who organized the initiative together with Usmi, deposited a golden rose at the foot of the statue of Saint Lucia, protector of the parish, full bloom, with two buds and leaves shining with light. A gesture, underlines Sister Venturelli, made so that “she can watch over all the victims of trafficking and in perennial memory of these victims broken by violence”.

The number of mothers involved in trafficking is on the increase

The objective of the initiative, explained Monsignor Reina, was in fact to “raise attention to a social problem which is given not only by the killing of these women, but by the moral degradation behind it and we would like to invite the whole community to reflect on this problem”. “The phenomenon of trafficking”, continues the USMI coordinator who spoke this morning at Pope’s window, “after the pandemic it is changing a lot and it is no longer like a decision from years ago. Often now young girls arrive, aged 24-25 who already have a child or are pregnant and therefore the welcome is also changing because it is one thing to welcome a girl and another thing to welcome a mother with a child, who is very probably the result of violence. There is a more particular journey to take with them”.

The crucial customer problem

Furthermore, these women killed “were not on the street, but were in apartments where they received by appointment. There are some hotels that rent out rooms by the hour for girls”. “Our dilemma – concludes Sister Venturelli – is how to reach customers because we are convinced that if they issue a request for sexual exploitation, there would therefore be fewer girls and therefore the exploiters would have less chance of reaching the girls. This is a crucial issue.”