Against human trafficking. Reception and liberation
In Missioni Consolata, an article on Sister Maresa Sabena, who has been helping women victims of trafficking for 30 years
By Luca Lorusso
She has known hundreds of women, mostly Nigerian, victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation, Sister Maresa Sabena, Consolata missionary, 90 years old in this 2025.
Over the past 30 years, she has helped many of them get out of their condition of slavery and regain their identity and dignity. She has done this in the context of the great work carried out by the Pastoral Office for Migrants (Um) of the Archdiocese of Turin: a collection of hundreds of people who, by work, or by volunteer work, take care of migrants who are in the Turin area and who, for various reasons, turn to them.
Gentleness and firmness
We meet Sister Maresa in the Mother House of the Institute of the Missionaries of the Consolata, at 1 Via Coazze, in Turin.
She welcomes us at the gatehouse with a gentle smile framed by her gray veil, and leads us to a bright, high-ceilinged room where she seats us.
Her polite but clear and firm gestures and her gentle but firm voice give us a glimpse of a character that is gentle and strong at the same time: what it takes to listen to the hundreds of trafficked women and to face the dangers that their liberation, often obtained by denouncing their exploiters, can entail.
Today Sister Maresa does mostly welcoming and listening work, but there was a time when she was used to dealing with law enforcement, courts, exploiters, protection routes for women who reported.
The first two decades of her mission
Curious about her journey, we ask her to give us some coordinates to understand who she is: “I was born in 1935 in Savigliano (Cn). I was an only child. I studied in Pinerolo (To) where my family had moved.
I longed for the mission. In 1956, then, I came to Turin to present myself to the Missionaries of the Consolata.
I made my first profession in ’59 and, after two days, I entered the general administration in Grugliasco (To) where I stayed for almost 20 years helping in the works of the missionaries around the world. I particularly remember the time of the war in Mozambique. It was a time of very intense work to get aid to the sisters”.
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