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Home / Awards / Servitor Pacis Award / 2007 THE SERVITOR PACIS AWARD RECIPIENTS
2011 - Sr. Eugenia Bonetti, MC Sr. Eugenia Bonetti, MC, is an Italian Consolata Missionary Sister from Milan. She is a teacher and a social – pastoral worker by profession. Missionary for 24 years in Kenya, she worked as a Religious Education Adviser for the formation of teachers, local parish leaders and catechists; she also worked in parish activities mainly with women and with young people in secondary schools as a vocation directress. She returned to Italy in 1991 and in 1993 she was appointed to work in a “Refugee Caritas Centre” in Turin, with immigrant women, mainly Nigerians, who were victims of human trafficking. In January 2000 the Italian Union of Major Superiors (USMI) requested she set up a new counter trafficking office in Rome to coordinate and network the ministry of 250 religious women of 75 different Congregations, already working in a hundred homes, spread all over Italy, to assist, protect, rehabilitate and reintegrate victims of human trafficking asking for help. In spite of her busy schedule and office work she keeps in touch with victims and survivors for a constant and personal contact. With a group of volunteers, once a week, she meets girls at night on the streets, to listen to their problems and offering them opportunities for a change of life. She visits family homes or shelters to mediate in difficult situations, mainly due to cultural and language problems, mental sickness, the tracing of family, pregnancy, documents and voluntary repatriation. She visits them in hospital and accompanies them to their Embassies for an interview with an officer to obtain a legal passport. Moreover she visits hundreds of them every Saturday afternoon at a Centre of identification and expulsion with a group of 16 sisters from 13 different nationalities belonging to 10 Congregations. These visits started in 2003 and offer support, assistance and pastoral care with an ecumenical prayer service in different languages to immigrant women waiting for deportation. She is a liaison between USMI and COSUDOW the “Committee for the Support of the Dignity of Women” of NCWR (Nigerian Conference of Women Religious), to exchange useful information between the two countries. She has been providential in providing a shelter in Benin City for those victims either returning voluntarily or forcefully repatriated from Italy. The shelter was the first of its kind.
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