ST. JOSEPHINE BAKHITA
“I have given everything to my Master: He will take care of me… The best thing for us is not what we consider best, but what the Lord wants of us!” – St. Josephine Bakhita
St. Josephine Bakhita was a slave whose life tells a beautiful story of hope. After enduring torture for several years, she was finally sold to a caring master who took her to Italy. It was there that she began to learn about the Catholic Church, received the sacraments and entered the religious life.
Josephine was born in 1869 in a small village named Olgossa, located in the Darfur region of Sudan. As a young girl, while out in the fields with her family, she was kidnapped and sold into slavery. When her captors asked for her name, the child was too terrified to remember. They gave her the name Bakhita, a name that means “fortunate” in Arabic.
Her life as a slave wouldn’t appear to be one of a “fortunate” person. Bakhita was often tortured by her owners in the form of branding, cuts, and beatings. In her biography she notes one particularly terrifying moment when one of her masters cut her 114 times and poured salt in her wounds to ensure that the scars remained. “I felt I was going to die any moment, especially when they rubbed me in with the salt,” Bakhita wrote.
While she did not yet know of Christ, she was able to bear her suffering. She remained hopeful and pondered with awe, the creator of the world. “Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself: ‘Who could be the Master of these beautiful things?’ And I felt a great desire to see Him, to know Him and to pay Him homage.”
After being sold a total of five times, Bakhita was purchased by Callisto Legnani, the Italian consul in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Two years later, he took Bakhita to Italy to work as a nanny for his colleague, Augusto Michieli.
Michieli sent Bakhita to accompany his daughter to a school in Venice run by the Canossian Sisters. It was here that Bakhita felt called to learn more about the Catholic Church.
In 1890, she entered the Church and took the name of Josephine Margaret. She was received into the Church with inexpressible enthusiasm stating, “I received the Sacrament of Baptism with such joy that only angels could describe…”
In the meantime, Michielis wanted to take Josephine and his daughter back to Sudan. However, Josephine refused to return. The disagreement escalated and was taken to the Italian courts where it was ruled that Jospehine could stay in Italy because she was a free woman. Slavery was not recognized in Italy and it had also been illegal in Sudan since before Josephine had been born.
Josephine remained in Italy and decided to enter Canossians in 1893. In 1896, she professed her vows.
She was sent to Northern Italy in the city of Schio in 1902 where she devoted her life to assisting her community and teaching others to love the Lord. She often served as the door keeper of the community and was known for her smile, gentleness and holiness by those in Schio.
She always prayed that those around here would come to know Christ’s love. “If I were to meet the slave-traders who kidnapped me and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for if that did not happen, I would not be a Christian and Religious today…”
In her later years, Josephine experienced great sickness and pain. In her confusion, it is said that she would recall her childhood and cry out, “Please loosen the chains … they are so heavy!” After contracting pneumonia, she died on February 8th, 1947.
St. Josephine was beatified in 1992 and canonized shortly after on October, 2000 by Pope John Paul II. In his homily, the Pope stated that in St. Josephine Bakhita, “We find a shining advocate of genuine emancipation. The history of her life inspires not passive acceptance but the firm resolve to work effectively to free girls and women from oppression and violence, and to return them to their dignity in the full exercise of their rights.” She is the first person to be canonized from Sudan and is the patron saint of the country.
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