CrucisSt. Josephine Bakhita
St. Josephine Bakhita was born around 1869 in the Darfur region of Sudan, and died on 8 February 1947 at Schio, Italy. Kidnapped by slave traders as a small child — so traumatized that she forgot her own name — she was given the mocking name 'Bakhita' ('fortunate') and endured years of brutal captivity, being sold and resold several times and cruelly abused. Eventually she was bought by an Italian family and brought to Italy.
There, entrusted for a time to the Canossian Sisters, she encountered the God who, she came to understand, had loved and watched over her through all her sufferings. When her owners tried to reclaim her, the courts upheld that slavery was illegal in Italy and she was free. She was baptized in 1890 and became a Canossian Daughter of Charity, serving her convent with such gentleness and joy for fifty years that all who met her were moved. Canonized in 2000 by Pope St. John Paul II, she is honored as a patron of Sudan and of the victims of human trafficking.
Selected quotes
“He who held me when I had no one will never let go of any soul that turns to him.”
“Trust the One who guides you, for he draws straight even with the crooked lines of suffering.”
“If I were to meet those who enslaved me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for through them I came to know my God.”