St. Josephine Bakhita
Kidnapped so young she forgot her own name. Bakhita was what her captors called her.
She was about seven when men took her from her village in Sudan. The fear was so complete that she forgot her own name, permanently, and never got it back. The men called her Bakhita, which means lucky. That is the name she carried for the rest of her life.
She was sold five times. The last family brought her to Italy and left her with some nuns while they traveled, and in that house she learned, for the first time, that there was a God who had been paying attention to her the whole way.
When the family came back for her she refused to go, and an Italian court agreed she had never legally been theirs. She was around twenty. She stayed with the sisters for the next fifty years, mostly cooking and answering the door, and people came from all over just to hear her say that she had forgiven every single one of them.
St. Josephine Bakhita facts for kids
- Bakhita means lucky. Her kidnappers gave her the name as a joke.
- She never remembered her real name
- An Italian court ruled in 1889 that she had never been anyone's property
- She spent 50 years as the doorkeeper of her convent, and the town called her Our Black Mother
Feast day: February 8 · Patron of Sudan and survivors of trafficking
St. Josephine, when I am angry at someone, show me how you let it go.