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St. Josephine Bakhita
On February 8, the Church commemorates the life of St.
Josephine Bakhita, a Canossian Sister who was kidnapped and sold into
slavery in Sudan.
Josephine Bakhita was born in 1869, in a small village in the Darfur
region of Sudan. She was kidnapped while working in the fields with her
family and subsequently sold into slavery. Her captors asked for her
name but she was too terrified to remember so they named her “Bakhita,â�
which means “fortunateâ� 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. “I felt I was going to die any moment, especially when they
rubbed me in with the salt,â� Bakhita wrote.
She bore her suffering valiantly though she did not know Christ or
the redemptive nature of suffering. She also had a certain awe for the
world and its creator. “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.â�
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.â� In the meantime, Michieli wanted to
take Josephine and his daughter back to Sudan, but Josephine refused to
return.
The disagreement escalated and was taken to the Italian courts where
it was ruled that Josephine 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.
She made her profession in 1896 and was sent to Northern Italy, where
she dedicated her life to assisting her community and teaching others to
love God.
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.â�
St. Josephine was beatified in 1992 and canonized shortly after on
October 2000 by Pope John Paul II. She is the first person to be
canonized from Sudan and is the patron saint of the country.
Source: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint.php?n=680
