Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

From Slave to Saint: The Story of St. Josephine Bakhita [Catholic Caucus]
WAU.org ^ | February 2012 | Jill Boughton

Posted on 02/09/2012 6:10:54 PM PST by Salvation

From Slave to Saint

The Story of St. Josephine Bakhita

From Slave to Saint

The girl was walking in the fields some ways off from her home, when two strangers appeared and asked her to pick them some fruit. Brought up to show courtesy to adults, the nine-year-old hurried to obey. Not until she was in the forest did she realize it was a trick.

“I saw two persons behind me,” she later recalled. “One of them briskly grabbed me with one hand, while the other one pulled out a knife from his belt and held it to my side. He told me, ‘If you cry, you’ll die! Follow us!’ with a lordly voice.”

After a forced march, the girl was sold as a slave. “Bakhita,” her captors called her—Arabic for “Lucky One.”

Though the title was intended sarcastically, it came to express the girl’s own outlook on her life. In later years, she gladly accepted the name and wished for an opportunity to forgive her captors. Even more remarkably, she thanked God for the good that had come from her suffering. “If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me,” she wrote, “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.”

Into Darkness. Born near Darfur, in modern Sudan, around 1869, the saint we know as Josephine Bakhita belonged to a close-knit family of eight living children, including a twin sister. Although they were animists who worshipped divine spirits in natural objects, even as a young child, Bakhita hungered to know God. “When I contemplated the moon, the stars, and all the beautiful things of nature, I was wondering, ‘Who is the master of it all?’ And I felt a keen desire to see him, to know him, and to pay him homage.”

The first shadow fell when her eldest sister was captured by slave traders while most of the family was out in the fields. Although Africans were no longer being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean at this time, there was still a profitable slave trade on the continent. African or Arab raiders would seize vulnerable people and sell them to rich Arabs or to rulers from another tribe. Bakhita’s father and his workers searched the countryside for the kidnapped girl—”but all in vain. My sister was gone forever.”

Her own turn came soon afterward, while she and a friend were out picking herbs. Armed strangers separated the two and carried off Bakhita. She spent a month in “a hole of a room, littered with tools and scraps,” weeping inconsolably for her family. Then she found herself on the block in the first of five slave markets. Her successive owners included a brutal Turkish general and an Italian who was kindly but expressed no qualms about participating in this traffic in human beings.

Although she and another girl managed to flee once, climbing a tree to escape a lion, they were soon discovered and sold again. Bakhita later described some of the cruelty she suffered: “There was not even one day when I was not dealt some punishment or other. When a wound from the whip began to heal, other blows would pour down on me, even though I had done nothing to deserve them.”

Once she was whipped for overhearing a quarrel between her master and his wife—wounded so severely that “I had to lie on the straw mat for two months without being able to move.” According to the fashion of the time and place, her arms, breasts, and stomach were tattooed with 114 elaborate designs incised with a razor, then kept open by being rubbed with salt. However, she was never raped. “Our Lady protected me, even before I could know her.”

Despite this misery, Bakhita said she “never despaired. I felt a mysterious strength within me that sustained me.” She refrained from theft and trickery, as well as bitterness.

“Thank You, My God!” When she was about fourteen, Bakhita was sold in Khartoum to Callisto Legnani, agent of the Italian consul. For the first time, a master treated her kindly. He even helped in a fruitless search for her own family. When he left for Italy two years later, Bakhita begged to go with him.

Sailing on the same ship to Genoa was Legnani’s good friend, Augusto Michieli. The consul gave Bakhita to Michieli’s wife, Maria, to help with the baby she was expecting. That daughter, Mimmina, grew very fond of Bakhita, and the feeling was mutual.

The Michieli family wasn’t particularly religious, but it was there that Bakhita was exposed to Christianity. One of their employees gave her a crucifix which mysteriously drew her heart. Her chance to learn more came a few years later, when Augusto and Maria returned to Sudan; they left Mimmina—with Bakhita as her nursemaid— in a Venice boarding school run by the Canossian Daughters of Charity.

“And so, the saintly sisters, with a patience that was truly heroic, instructed me in the faith,” wrote Bakhita. As she prepared for baptism, she realized that she had experienced God “in my heart since childhood, without knowing who he was… . Now, at last, I knew him. Thank you, my God, thank you!”

Nine months later, Signora Michieli returned to take Mimmina and Bakhita back to Africa. In an uncharacteristic show of defiance, Bakhita refused: “My instruction for baptism was not yet complete.” Incensed, Maria pleaded, threatened, and finally appealed to the law. She learned, however, that since slavery had long been illegal in Italy, Bakhita was free to make her own decision. Painfully, Bakhita parted from the family she had grown to love.

She was received into the church just over a month later, on January 9, 1890. “With a joy that only the angels could describe,” she was baptized Josephine Margaret Bakhita, confirmed, and received her first Communion. Unable to express in words what this new birth meant to her, she was often observed in the following days kissing the baptismal font.

Praising God’s Providence. She remained to study, pray, and serve the household of the Canossian Sisters, who were all Italian by birth. After several years, she nervously asked if “a poor African girl” might join the religious order. This she did, in 1893: “I could hear, more and more clearly, the gentle voice of the Lord, urging me to consecrate my life to him.”

Overwhelmed that God had chosen her, Sr. Josephine served him as a nun for more than fifty years, mostly in Venice, Milan, and Schio, a town in the Italian Alps. Her tasks were lowly: cooking, cleaning, teaching embroidery, and serving as doorkeeper. Though slow of movement—perhaps on account of the torture she had suffered as a teenager—she did every job lovingly, with a contagious joy. To those who had more visible roles, she would say, “You go and teach. I will go to the chapel and pray that you may do it well.”

All who passed through her gate came to confide in this kind woman. Among them were mothers and kindergarten students on their way to the school run by the sisters. Josephine would lay her hand on their heads, conveying her affection and blessing.

This life of loving service in Schio continued uninterrupted through two world wars. When air-raid sirens sent others scurrying for cover, Sr. Josephine kept on with her cooking or sweeping. “Let them fire away,” she said. “It is the Master who is in command.” Many villagers credited the fact that their town escaped serious damage to the prayers of “nostra Madre Moretta”—”our Black Mother.”

At the urging of her superiors, Josephine wrote her autobiography and made a speaking tour of Italy to tell her story and raise money for mission work. Her words were few, and she was always eager to hand the podium over to more eloquent speakers. She invariably began, “For God’s glory, and in praise of his providence that brought me to salvation.”

She prayed fervently for the conversion of her family, even though she was never able to locate them. As convent doorkeeper, she encouraged parents to let prospective novices follow God’s call to become missionaries. Some, she hoped, might go to the African homeland that always remained in her thoughts and prayers.

No Fear. Bakhita’s journey to true freedom left her with a profound consciousness of being in her Lord’s hands. Asked if she wished to go to heaven, she replied, “I neither wish to go nor to stay. God knows where to find me when he wants me!”

She talked about carrying two bags on her journey towards eternity. “One contains my sins. The other, much heavier, contains the infinite merits of Jesus Christ.” She described how she would cover her ugly bag with Our Lady’s merits, and open the other at her moment of judgment. “I am sure I will not be rejected. Then I will turn to St. Peter and say, ‘You can close the door after me—I am here to stay.’”

In her mid-seventies, when arthritis and bouts of pneumonia made Josephine dependent on a walking stick and then a wheelchair, she remained grateful. “I thank God for the many graces granted me, happy to have something to offer in return.” She had never imposed rigorous penances on herself, but she willingly accepted “the suffering caused by illness.” In the last days of her life, pain and high fever caused her to relive her tortures as a slave. In her delirium, she begged, “The chains are too tight. Loosen them a little, please!”

Sr. Josephine died in the Schio convent on February 8, 1947. As townspeople filed by her bier, mothers laid her hand on their children’s heads for the last time; some remarked that it remained flexible even in death.

The Master of Life. Tragically, there are more slaves in the world today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In modern Sudan, Josephine’s birthplace, a conservative estimate places the number of slaves at over twenty-five thousand. But throughout the world—including the United States and European nations—millions of men, women, and children are being bought and sold, held captive and brutalized for profit.

Pope John Paul II alluded to this dark reality when he canonized St. Josephine Bakhita in 2000. Her life, he said, “inspires not passive acceptance, but the firm resolve to work effectively to free girls and women from oppression and violence, and to return them to their dignity in the full exercise of their rights.”

St. Josephine—a woman transformed by Christ’s love and forgiveness—is also a messenger of reconciliation, he said, and a “shining advocate of genuine emancipation.” Through her suffering, “she came to understand the profound truth that God, and not man, is the true Master of every human being, of every human life.” In our own way, we must each make the same discovery.



TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; History; Theology
KEYWORDS: catholic; saints; slavery
A gripping story. She is patron of slaves and child-trafficking.
1 posted on 02/09/2012 6:11:01 PM PST by Salvation
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Salvation
From Slave to Saint: The Story of St. Josephine Bakhita [Catholic Caucus]
Josephine Bakhita - an African Saint [from Sudan]
From Slave to Saint: The Story of St. Josephine Bakhita
A Saint For Those Who Are Prisoners of Their Past [St. Josephine Bakhita] (Catholic Caucus)
St. Josephine Bakhita Was a Humble Witness to God's Love
2 posted on 02/09/2012 6:20:33 PM PST by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nickcarraway; NYer; ELS; Pyro7480; livius; ArrogantBustard; Catholicguy; RobbyS; marshmallow; ...

Saint of the Day (a little late) Ping!


3 posted on 02/09/2012 6:23:40 PM PST by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Salvation; netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; ...
EWTN showed a two week movie on the Life of St. Bakhita. What an extraordinary example of simple faith, even so far as wanting to kiss the hands of her persecutors. The following additional information comes from Wikipedia.


SUDAN. Pope John Paul II's official visit to Sudan, arriving at Khartoum airport on 10.2.93, after visiting several other African nations, he pleaded for human rights, a solution to the civil war with the South Sudan (majority population are Catholics) when he met with the President Col Omar Al Bashir (who came to power in 1989). At Papal Nunciature he was welcomed by Muslims and priests from several sects, and listened to a speech by Dr Ahmed al Imam. 1993.


Bakhita's legacy is that transformation is possible through suffering. Her story of deliverance from physical slavery also symbolizes all those who find meaning and inspiration in her life for their own deliverance from spiritual slavery. On a larger scale, however, Bakhita's story of a slave who was forced to convert to Islam and later chose Christianity represents a conflict between Christianity and Islam. In May 1992 news of her beatification was banned by Khartoum which Pope John Paul II then personally visited only nine months later. On 10 February 1993, facing all risks, surrounded by an immense crowd in the huge Green Square of the capital of Sudan, he solemnly honoured Bakhita on her own soil. "Rejoice, all of Africa! Bakhita has come back to you. The daughter of Sudan sold into slavery as a living piece of merchandise and yet still free. Free with the freedom of the saints."
Josephine Bakhita

On her deathbed, someone asked her: "How are you? Today is Saturday". "Yes, I am so happy: Our Lady... Our Lady!". These were her last audible words.

4 posted on 02/17/2013 5:58:03 AM PST by NYer ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." --Jeremiah 1:5)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NYer

I saw this movie on EWTN - it was fantastic!


5 posted on 02/17/2013 7:44:39 AM PST by PatriotGirl827 (O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: 2ndMostConservativeBrdMember; afraidfortherepublic; Alas; al_c; american colleen; annalex; ...

I saw the movie the last 2 Saturdays on EWTN, it was very moving and had me in tears. I would highly recommend it for families or for a church movie night, the movie can be purchased on the net. I would recommend it for non-Catholics too; it’s a beautiful story of a pious woman who loved and overcame many hardships and forgave her oppressors. The movie Karol was also very moving, that too was on 2 recent Saturdays on EWTN, you can surely see God’s will in the life of Pope John Paul II. I would also recommend this for non-Catholics too, just to see the hardship of the Poles who had to live through Nazism and Socialism and how they survived and conquered both. And again, you can see how much this man(JPII) loved and forgave everyone-a remarkable man.


6 posted on 02/17/2013 7:09:39 PM PST by Coleus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Coleus

Bump.


7 posted on 02/17/2013 8:11:45 PM PST by fatima (Free Hugs Today :))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Coleus

I downloaded it in parts and watched it on youtube. I don’t have the link but those who missed it might want to google and see if it’s still there.

People in the new (Christian)country of South Sudan have great devotion to her. Those Christians have suffered greatly from persecution: I once worked with a doc who fled there and was taken out of a refugee camp and sent to school by the seventh day Adventists (he was a Catholic)...he later went to medical school and when I knew him he was working at a Methodist mission hospital in Liberia (and still a Catholic, but when you work in places like Africa, the branches of the church seem less important)....


8 posted on 02/22/2013 3:39:54 AM PST by LadyDoc
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson