Saint Josephine Bakhita

She was kidnapped at the age of eight, marched hundreds of kilometers across the desert with a chain around her neck, and sold like merchandise from one master to another, five in all. Her body bore more than one hundred and forty deep scars from beatings and from the cruel custom of cutting and marking slaves’ skin.

From the darkness of brutal slavery she stepped into the light of true freedom. Today she is honored as a witness to forgiveness and the patron saint of victims of human trafficking throughout the world.

The terror was so great that the child forgot her own name and the names of her parents. Imagine it: a little girl robbed not only of her family and her freedom but of her very name, the last thread tying her to where she came from. Seeing her weep, the kidnappers mockingly called her “Bakhita,” Arabic for “the lucky one.”

Her fourth master was a Turkish army general notorious for his cruelty. In his household, Bakhita and the other slave women were subjected to a barbaric form of “tattooing”: a razor was used to make hundreds of deep cuts on her chest, belly and arms, and then salt and gunpowder were rubbed into the open wounds so that the scars would stand out forever.

For more than a month Bakhita lay motionless on a ragged mat between life and death, with more than one hundred and forty bleeding wounds. Years later, when she was an old nun, the sisters who helped her wash or dress could not help shuddering at her back and arms, crisscrossed with raised scars, the silent proof of a stolen childhood.

In 1883, when the Turkish general had to return home, he sold Bakhita to Callisto Legnani, the Italian consul in the capital, Khartoum.

In 1888, when the Michielis had to go back to Africa to run a large hotel, on the advice of their steward they left Bakhita and little Mimmina as boarders at the convent of the Canossian Daughters of Charity in Venice.

She exclaimed:

“Since I was a child, looking at the sun, the moon and the stars glittering in the desert sky, I wondered who had made those wonderful beauties... And now I have found Him: He is the Most High!”

In 1893, answering God’s call, she entered the novitiate of the Canossian Daughters of Charity. On December 8, 1896, in Verona, the former slave made her perpetual vows.

In 1902, Sister Josephine Bakhita was sent to the Canossian convent in the small town of Schio, in the province of Vicenza in northern Italy. She spent the remaining forty-five years of her life in this peaceful place.

Sister Bakhita did the humblest jobs: cooking, sewing, and above all keeping the convent door. With her ever-present radiant smile, her warm, deep voice and her kind eyes, she became a loving support to the whole town. People affectionately called her “Madre Moretta,” the dear Black Mother.

After school, children ran chattering to gather around her so she would lay her work-worn hand on their heads in blessing; the poor who came begging received a share of her bread; and families in trouble came to her for comfort.

Through the First and Second World Wars, when bombs devastated northern Italy, Schio was spared, and not a single resident was killed. The townspeople were convinced that the prayers of their “Black Mother” had protected them.

In her feverish delirium, terrifying memories of her years as a child slave came flooding back. She whispered to the sisters caring for her:

“Please loosen the chains a little... they hurt me so much!”

Seventy years had passed since she was kidnapped, but invisible chains still gripped the memory of a woman who had lived most of her life in freedom and peace.

Yet when a sister gently reminded her: “Mother Bakhita, today is Our Lady’s day!”, she suddenly became lucid again and smiled radiantly:

“Yes, that’s right! I am going to Our Lady!”

Tens of thousands of people from all over the Veneto came to pay their respects. They were astonished to find that her body stayed supple, her joints flexible, and that she looked beautiful and at peace.

The Church chose her feast day, February 8, as the “World Day of Prayer and Awareness against Human Trafficking,” a fitting choice, since trafficking still thrives in many hidden forms today.