Unrecognizable sinful changes on the Italian avenue: sexual slavery sentenced to death by slow hunger

Prostitutes are rescued by nuns and priests.

Viale Cristoforo Colombo – Christopher Columbus Avenue is one of the most important highways in Rome, connecting the city center with the fascist EUR residential area. Two months ago, a walk on this avenue would have scared and surprised many foreign tourists late at night: bus stops, intersections and green lawns would become a showcase for prostitutes, transsexuals and transvestites at night. On Columbus Avenue, it was as if hundreds of traffickers were working in a brothel without barriers until morning.

Prostitution in Italy is neither legal nor illegal. Until the spring of 1958, there were state-controlled legal brothels in the country: the case of tolleranza (House of Tolerance). On the initiative of Senator Lina Merlin, representing the Socialist Party, the Italian parliament voted in favor of the “legge Merlin” law that prohibits sex work. Still, politicians were reluctant to criminalize prostitution and include it in the penal code, as they examined the country’s constitution and found an article that stated priorities for personal human freedoms.

Prostitutes were driven from the brothels to the streets, and the mafia and various groups of organized criminals took control of the state’s sexual services.

According to the social journalism website Vita, some 70,000 prostitutes were working in Italy before the pandemic. About half of these women come from Eastern European countries – Romania, Albania, Moldova, less than half – from Nigeria and Latin America, only every tenth – from Italy. Today they are nowhere to be seen: the famous Christopher Columbus Avenue in Rome remains empty at night.

“Most of these women lived and worked on the fringes of society, they were invisible. With the government’s strict quarantine, they have become even more invisible, invisible, even more vulnerable,” said Marzia Gotti, an activist against sexual exploitation. “Girls who come from abroad or are fraudulently brought generally do not have documents, do not have access to state benefits or food stamps. Having lost their only livelihood, prostitutes are sentenced to slow death by starvation.”

The only institution that did not exclude previous “sex workers” was Caritas, as well as individual parishes in the Catholic Church. The newspaper La Repubblica described the exciting clash of completely opposite groups of society on the steaming plate of pasta: on the one hand, the professional sins of hunger and cold, on the other, the nuns who had made vows of chastity and morality.

Caritas’ sister parents admit that when they saw the young girls in challenging clothes outside the canteen, they were upset at first and didn’t know how to behave. “We immediately realized what kind of profession was coming to our canteen. But we didn’t ask them anything, we offered to sit at the table and eat, “says Sister Albina.

Priest Davide Schiavon, who runs Caritas Treviso in the rich Veneto region, is also surprised: “In the past, illegal immigrants approached us, but now a completely new and highly vulnerable social group has emerged: prostitutes, transsexuals. She does not have access to state support, so she turns to us. We are not rejecting anyone. “

In Apulia, Lucio Ciardo, a parish priest from the city of Oujento, has so far dealt with immigrants and circus performers who have no income, but one day 10 prostitutes asked for support. In Italy, there is currently no mass in the churches, the flow of victims in the parishes has decreased and the number of applicants has doubled, so Father Lucio has asked the townspeople to donate a small donation of € 2 -5 to help those who have been left without any social security mechanism. .

Francis sends a beggar

Torvajanica is a tourist city on the southern coast of Rome, where a large group of transsexuals from South America stayed and provided sexual services many years ago. After the government declared quarantine and banned any movement of the population from their home without good reason, transgender people were left without clients and without any livelihood for a written reason.

“One day they came to church to pray and they told me about their misery,” priest Andrea Conocchia told Adnkronos. The Torvajanika pastor admitted that he initially felt uncomfortable interacting with these brightly colored women, but did not refuse to help.

“Unfortunately, my options at this time, when the church no longer receives any sacrifice from the faithful, were very limited, so it was decided to go directly to Pope Francis,” explains Father Andrea. The transsexuals wrote a letter in Spanish, the pontiff’s mother tongue, which the pastor of Torvajanica sent to the pope at the Vatican.

Barely sinful supporters awaited a response. It happened: the pope ordered Cardinal Konrad Krajewski to help the hungry. The official title of this hierarchy of the Church is “elemosiniere pontificio” – apostolic elemosinarium or papal beggar. This is the right hand of Francis for the “works of love of loved ones”, an important position of the Roman Catholic Church, which dates back to the 13th century.

K. Krajewski, a beggar of Polish descent, became famous in Rome last year for arbitrarily resuming the power supply of five hundred homeless people living illegally in the capital building.

This time, the cardinal, following the will of Francis, transmitted to the hungry transsexuals the Pope’s blessing and the funds distributed by the pastor of the Torvajanica parish. “How can we not help? After all, these are people, living things that lacked food. We are all children of God ”, explained Pope Conrad Krajewski to Il Corriere della Sera.