Today is the Feast of Saint Josephine Bakhita, the African slave turned Italian nun turned Heavenly saint. Happy feast day!
“Saint Josephine’s life is a testament to the power of Christian love and forgiveness in the face of unspeakable cruelty and injustice,” says Kishore Jayabalan, Chairman of the Diocese of Lansing’s Commission on Catholic Social Teaching, February 8.
“She had every reason in the world to hate those who abused her. Yet when she was later asked what she would say to her captors, she replied, ‘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’.”
Born around the year 1869 in Olgossa in the Darfur region of southern Sudan, Josephine was kidnapped at the age of seven by Muslim slave traders. She was given the name Bakhita, which means “The Lucky One”. During her years of slavery, beatings and violence were Bakhita’s daily lot.
In 1883 she was ransomed by the Italian consul in Khartoum, Sudan. Two years later she was taken back to Venice in Italy. There Bakhita grew to know and love Jesus Christ and His Holy Church. There she also won her freedom in a court case supported by Cardinal Domenico Agostini, the Patriarch of Venice. In 1890, she was baptized and confirmed by Cardinal Agostini, taking the name Josephine.
Josephine entered the Canossian Sisters in 1893 and made her profession three years later. In 1902 she was appointed to the Canossian Sisters convent in Schio in northern Italy, in the foothills of the Alps. There she remained for the remainder of her life, employed in humble tasks in kitchen, sacristy and needlework class, and acquiring a reputation for great holiness. During World War II, the people of Schio looked on Sister Josephine as their particular saint who would safeguard the town from danger. An endless stream of people came to see her and to hear her story from her own lips. In 1943 she celebrated her golden jubilee of religious life.
In her old age Sister Josephine’s health began to decline, but she bore her sufferings with great fortitude. She died at the age of 78 and was beatified by Pope Saint John Paul II on May 17, 1992. On October 1, 2000, the same Pope declared her a canonized saint.
“Saint Josephine truly exemplified turning all things, even the most painful and humiliating, into good because she came to know and love our true Master: ‘I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me — I am awaited by this Love. And so, my life is good.’ There is no better model of Catholic social teaching,” concludes Kishore Jayabalan.
Saint Josephine Bakhita, pray for us!
• Additional material courtesy of Dictionary of African Christian Biography https://dacb.org
• To know more about the Diocese of Lansing’s Commission on Catholic Social Teaching go to: https://www.dioceseoflansing.org/commission-catholic-social-teaching-members