Saint Who Transformed From Suffering

Today's saint was born just after the end of the Civil War in the United States; however, she would not have her freedom like the slaves in the United States.  She would wait until her adulthood to be free as she was living in Italy.

St. Josephine Bakhita

Feast day: February 8
Birth: 1869
Death: 1947
Sudan (slave and freed in Italy)

Josephine was born into the prestigious Daju people; her well respected father was brother of the village chief. She was surrounded by a loving family of three brothers and three sisters; as she says in her autobiography: "I lived a very happy and carefree life, without knowing what suffering."

Sometime between the age of seven to nine, she was kidnapped by Arab slave traders, who already had kidnapped her elder sister two years earlier. She was cruelly forced to walk barefoot about 600 miles, and was already sold and bought twice before she arrived at her destination. Over the course of twelve years (1877–1889), she was resold again three more times and then given away. It is said that the trauma of her abduction caused her to forget her own name.  When she was forced to become Muslim, she took on the name given to her by the slavers, bakhita, Arabic for lucky.

Josephine was bought by a very rich Arab merchant who employed her as a maid in service to his two daughters. They liked her and treated her well. But after offending one of her owner's sons, possibly for breaking a vase, the son lashed and kicked her so severely that she spent more than a month unable to move from her straw bed.

She was then sold to a Turkish general and she had to serve his mother-in-law and his wife who both were very cruel to all their slaves.  It was here that she was also scarred with intricate designs on her body by the master's wife.  Bakhita says: "During all the years I stayed in that house, I do not recall a day, that passed without some wound or other. When a wound from the whip began to heal, other blows would pour down on me".

In 1882, a war broke out in the region, and her master, in his haste to leave, began to sell his slaves in great numbers.  However, he held back ten slaves to be sold at a later destination.  Josephine was one of these ten.  She was then sold to an Italian consul, who didn’t use the lash when giving orders and treated her in a loving and kind way.

Two years later, when he had to return to Italy, Josephine begged to go with him. By the end of 1884 they escaped with a friend of the consul, Augusto Michieli. They traveled 400 miles on camel back to to the largest port of Sudan, and arrived at the Italian port of Genoa. They were met there by Augusto Michieli's wife Signora Maria. In grateful thanksgiving for safe travel, the consul gave the enslavement of Josephine as a present. Her new masters took her to their family villa.  She lived there for three years and became nanny to their daughter Alice, known as Mimmina.  The Michielis brought her with them to the Sudan for nine months before returning to Italy.

In 1888, her life would be forever changed, when her master decided to purchase a hotel in Sudan.  His wife felt she should be with her husband, but for safety reasons left Josephine and Alice in the care of the Canossian Sisters in Venice.  When she returned to take them both to Suakin, Josephine refused to leave.  The superior of the institute for Catechumenates complained to the Italian authorities.

In 1889 an Italian court ruled that, because the British had induced Sudan to outlaw slavery before her birth and because Italian law did not recognize slavery, Josephine had never legally been a slave.  For the first time in her life she was in control of her own destiny. She chose to remain with the nuns.  In 1890 she was baptized with the names of Josephine Margaret and Fortunata (which is the Latin translation for the Arabic Bakhita). On the same day she was also confirmed and received Holy Communion from the Archbishop of Sarto and Cardinal Patriarch of Venice...the future Pope Pius X.

She would later enter into the novitiate and then the full veil by 1896.  She was always kind and generous regardless of the job she was given.   Her special charisma and reputation for sanctity were noticed by her order.  The first publication of her story in 1931, made her famous throughout Italy.  During the Second World War (1939–1945) she shared the fears and hopes of the town people, who considered her a saint and felt protected by her mere presence.

A young student once asked Bakhita: "What would you do, if you were to meet your captors?" Without hesitation she responded: "If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands. For, if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious today."

Her last years were marked by pain and sickness. She used a wheelchair, but she retained her cheerfulness, and if asked how she was, she would always smile and answer "as the Master desires". In the extremity of her last hours her mind was driven back to the years of her slavery and she cried out "The chains are too tight, loosen them a little, please!". After a while she came round again. Someone asked her: "How are you? Today is Saturday". "Yes, I am so happy: Our Lady... Our Lady!". These were her last audible words.  She died soon after in 1947 and thousands came to her funeral.

In May 1992 news of her beatification was banned by Khartoum which Pope John Paul II then personally visited only nine months later.  On 10 February 1993, facing all risks, surrounded by an immense crowd in the huge Green Square of the capital of Sudan, he solemnly honored Josephine on her own soil. "Rejoice, all of Africa! Bakhita has come back to you. The daughter of Sudan sold into slavery as a living piece of merchandise and yet still free. Free with the freedom of the saints."

Pope Benedict XVI, on 30 November 2007, in the beginning of his second encyclical letter Spe Salvi (In Hope We Were Saved), relates her entire life story as an outstanding example of the Christian hope.