St. Josephine Bakhita

Their story

Bakhita was born around 1869 in the Darfur region of Sudan. When she was a young child she was kidnapped by slave traders. The trauma was so great that she forgot her own name. Over the following years she was sold several times and suffered terrible cruelty, including being deliberately scarred over much of her body. In 1883 she was bought by an Italian diplomat, who treated her kindly and later took her to Italy. There she became a nanny for the daughter of another family. While staying with the Canossian Sisters in Venice, she came to know the God she had sensed in her heart since childhood, the Master of all creation who had been with her all along. When her owner’s family wanted to take her back to Africa, she refused to leave. In 1889 an Italian court declared that she had always been legally free, because slavery was not recognized in Italy. She chose to stay with the Sisters. Bakhita was baptized in 1890, taking the name Josephine, and later became a Canossian sister herself. For decades she served as cook, sacristan and doorkeeper in Schio, where people loved her gentleness and called her their “little brown mother.” She forgave those who had enslaved her. She died in 1947 and was canonized in 2000.