February 8 + Saint Josephine Bakhita

Josephine Bakhita was born in 1869, in a small village in the Darfur region of Sudan. She was kidnapped at age 7 while working in the fields with her family and was sold into slavery. Her captors asked for her name but she was too terrified to remember so they named her “Bakhita,” which means “fortunate” in Arabic.

Retrospectively, Bakhita was very fortunate, but the first years of her life do not necessarily attest to it. She was tortured by her various owners who branded her, beat and cut her. 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.

She bore her suffering valiantly even though she did not know Christ or the redemptive nature of suffering. She also had a certain awe for the world and its creator. Bakhita wrote, “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. He, in turn, sent Bakhita to accompany his daughter to a school in Venice run by the Canossian Sisters.

Bakhita felt called to learn more about the Church and was baptized with the name “Josephine Margaret.” In the meantime, Michieli wanted to take Bakhita and his daughter back to Sudan, but Bakhita refused to return.

The disagreement escalated and was taken to the Italian courts where it was ruled that Bakhita 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 Bakhita had been born.

Bakhita remained in Italy and entered the Institute of Saint Magdalene of Canossa in 1893 and made her profession three years later. In 1902, she was transferred to the city of Schio (northeast of Verona), where she assisted her religious community through cooking, sewing, embroidery and welcoming visitors at the door. She soon became well loved by the children attending the sisters’ school and the local citizens.

She was known for her smile, gentleness and holiness. She even went on record saying, “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.”

Josephine Bakhita is the first person to be canonized from Sudan and is the patron saint of human-trafficking survivors.

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See the Saint Josephine Bakhita Collection