Saint Josephine Bakhita

Bakhita, the future St. Josephine Bakhita, was born about 1869 AD in a small village of Darfur, in western Sudan. When St. Bakhita was five, slave raiders carried off her older sister.

Later, two men stopped St. Bakhita in the fields, held a knife to her side and carried her off. The terror made her forget her own name and her parents' names. Her captors named her Bakhita, which means fortunate.

St. Bakhita fled into a forest and was caught, and she was then made to wear heavy chains. She was sold five times in the markets of El Obeid and Khartoum, and each time into a worse situation.

Her last owners were the mother and the wife of a general. In their house St. Bakhita was whipped until she bled, every day. Her skin was cut in patterns, and salt rubbed into the cuts kept the scars raised.

In Khartoum in 1882 AD, an Italian merchant bought St. Bakhita for the Italian consul, Callisto Legnani. In his house, for the first time since her capture, no one used the whip to give her orders. When the Mahdist rising advanced, Legnani had to go home, and she asked to go with him.

At Genoa, Legnani agreed that St. Bakhita should stay with the family of his friend Augusto Michieli. At their house in Zianigo, in the Veneto, she became nanny to their daughter Alice, called Mimmina. The family's steward, Illuminato Checchini, gave her her first crucifix.

In 1888 AD the Michielis left for Suakin, on the Red Sea, to run a hotel. On Checchini's advice, St. Bakhita and Mimmina were left with the Canossian Sisters in Venice. At their Institute of the Catechumens, the sisters taught her the faith.

A year later Signora Michieli came back to take them both to Africa. This time St. Bakhita refused to go; she said she would stay with the sisters and serve God. On November 29, 1889 AD, a hearing at the Catechumens declared her free, and the King's attorney held that she was free to choose because slavery no longer existed in Italy.

On January 9, 1890 AD, the Patriarch of Venice baptised and confirmed St. Bakhita and gave her First Communion. At her baptism, St. Josephine Bakhita took the names Giuseppina, Margherita and Fortunata.

St. Josephine Bakhita entered the Canossian novitiate in 1893 AD. On December 8, 1896 AD, she professed her vows at the order's mother house in Verona. That day she composed a prayer for her own people in Africa.

In 1902 AD St. Bakhita was sent to the Canossian house at Schio, in the province of Vicenza. She worked there as cook, sacristan, doorkeeper, mender and gardener. The town called her Madre Moretta (*the little Black Mother*).

From May 8, 1915 AD, the house served as a military hospital. St. Bakhita stayed on to run the kitchen and nurse the wounded. Under shellfire she sent her kitchen helpers to the shelter and stayed at her post.

In 1931 AD Ida Zanolini published Storia meravigliosa (*Tale of Wonder*), the life St. Bakhita had told her. Bruner, the Vatican's official photographer, came to photograph her. Through the 1930s AD she travelled northern Italy to speak for the missions.

At Ancona in June 1935 AD, crowds pressed round St. Bakhita with questions. At Montodine in 1939 AD, she stood on a step to talk to the nursery children. She told them her life and showed them the marks of slavery on her hands.

St. Josephine Bakhita died of pneumonia at Schio on February 8, 1947 AD, aged 78. Her community stood round her, weeping and praying. In her last agony she relived her days of slavery, and she died smiling.

Crowds filled the house to see their Madre Moretta one last time. St. Bakhita's remains rest in the church of the Holy Family at Schio. Pope St. John Paul II canonised her in St. Peter's Square on October 1, 2000 AD.