“The best thing for us is not what we consider best, but what the Lord wants of us!”
Josephine Margaret Bakhita was born around 1869 in the village of Olgossa in the Darfur region of Sudan, Africa. She was a member of the Daju people and her uncle was a tribal chief.
At the age of 8, she was kidnapped by Arab slave traders, and although she was just a child, she was forced to walk barefoot over 600 miles to the slave market. She was bought and sold twice over the grueling journey. Over the next 12 years, she would be bought, sold and given away over a dozen times and spent so much time in captivity that she forgot her original name.
Slave owners varied in treatment from fair to cruel. After breaking a vase, her 1st owner severely beat her to the point that she was incapacitated for a month. After which, she was sold. Another was a Turkish general who gave her to his wife and mother-in-law who both beat her daily. As one wound would heal, they inflicted another. They purposefully inflicted 114 permanent scars on her.
At 14, the general sold her to the Italian Vice Consul who was much kinder. When it was time for him to return to Italy, she begged to be taken with him and he agreed. After an arduous journey, she was given away to a family as a gift and served them as a nanny.
Her new family also had dealings in Sudan, and while the mistress was away, they placed her in the custody of the Canossian Sisters of Venice. There she came to learn about God. She always knew about Him, who created all things, but the sisters answered her deeper questions and moved by her time there, discerned a call to follow Christ.
When her owner returned, she refused to leave, and the sisters complained to Italian authorities on her behalf. The case went to court and they found that slavery had been outlawed in Sudan before she was born and therefore she was set free.
She was baptized, received the sacraments of holy communion and confirmation, and took the name Josephine Margaret and Fortunata. The Archbishop who administered was Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, who would later become Pope Pius X.
In 1896, at the age of 27, she took her final vows with the Canossian Daughters of Charity and assigned to a convent in Schio, Vicenza in Northern Italy.
She worked and traveled to other convents, telling her story to other sisters in preparation for their work in Africa. She was always cheerful, gentle, and charismatic. She professed that she would thank her kidnappers for without them, she might never have come to know Jesus Christ and enter His Church.
During WWII, citizens in Schio regarded her as their protector, and although bombs fell, not one citizen died.
In later years, she suffered physical pain, was forced to a wheelchair, but still remained cheerful. If anyone asked her how she was, she would reply, “As the Master desires.”
On the evening of February 8, 1947, at the age of 78, she spoke her last words, “Our Lady, Our Lady!” and then passed. She was canonized in 2000.
She is the patron saint of Sudan.
Her feast day is February 8.
For God’s Glory.
