Saint Josephine Bakhita

Saint Josephine Bakhita came from Sudan. As a child she was kidnapped and sold into slavery; years later she regained her freedom in Italy, was baptized, and became a Canossian sister. She spent more than half a century of religious life almost entirely in Schio, near Vicenza. The Church commemorates her on February 8.

She was born in a small village in Darfur, in western Sudan, around 1869; she herself did not know the exact date. At the age of seven or nine she was kidnapped by slave traders. The shock was so great that she forgot the name her parents had given her. Her kidnappers called her Bakhita, which means “fortunate.”

She was sold several times in the slave markets of El Obeid and Khartoum. Benedict XVI recalled in the encyclical Spe salvi that, as a slave of the mother and the wife of a general, she was flogged every day until she bled and bore 144 scars on her body for the rest of her life. In Khartoum she was bought by the Italian consul Callisto Legnani. In his house, for the first time since her kidnapping, no one raised a whip against her. When the consul was returning to Italy, she begged him to take her along.

In Genoa Legnani left her with the family of his friend Augusto Michieli, who lived in Zianigo, near Mirano, in northern Italy. There Bakhita became the nanny of the Michielis’ daughter, Mimmina. When Mrs. Michieli left for Suakin on the Red Sea, where her husband ran a hotel, the girl and her nanny were entrusted to the Canossian Sisters of the Institute of the Catechumens in Venice. There Bakhita came to know God, whom, as she recalled, she had sensed since childhood when she looked at the sun, the moon, and the stars. On January 9, 1890, she received Baptism, Confirmation, and First Holy Communion from the Patriarch of Venice and was given the name Josephine.

When Mrs. Michieli returned from Africa to take her daughter and Bakhita back, Bakhita firmly refused to go. She was already of age, and Italian law guaranteed her freedom of choice. She stayed with the Canossians, the Daughters of Charity founded by Saint Magdalene of Canossa, and on December 8, 1896, she made her religious vows in Verona. In the congregation’s house in Schio she worked in the kitchen, in the sacristy, and at the door, and she sewed and embroidered. She also traveled around Italy to promote the missions. In the Venetian dialect she called God “el me Paron,” my Master. The people of Schio called her “Madre Moretta,” the Black Mother.

In her last years she suffered a long and painful illness. Asked about her health, she would answer with a smile that she was as the Master wished. She died in Schio on February 8, 1947, surrounded by the sisters, with the name of Our Lady on her lips.

John Paul II beatified her on May 17, 1992, and canonized her on October 1, 2000, in Saint Peter’s Square. In February 1993, during his journey to Sudan, he celebrated Mass in her honor in Khartoum. Since 2015 the day of her memorial has been observed as the World Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking.