Josephine Bakhita

Who they were

Bakhita was born in 1869 in a village in Darfur, Sudan. At nine she was kidnapped by slave-traders, so terrified that she forgot her own name; they called her 'Bakhita', 'lucky'. Sold again and again in the markets of El Obeid and Khartoum, she was scarred with 114 cuts rubbed with salt while serving a Turkish general. In Khartoum the Italian consular agent Callisto Legnani bought her and treated her kindly, and in 1884 took her to Italy, where she became nanny to the daughter of the Michieli family near Mirano.

Left for nine months with the Canossian Sisters in Venice, she came to know Jesus, and on 9 January 1890 was baptised, confirmed and given First Communion by the Patriarch of Venice, taking the name Giuseppina. In 1893 she entered the Canossian novitiate, and for 45 years was cook, sacristan and above all doorkeeper of the convent at Schio, loved by the town for her gentle smile and goodness. She died of pneumonia on 8 February 1947.

The miracles

The miracles examined for her beatification and canonisation are not described in the sources we have used.

Why that counted as sanctity

Bakhita forgave everything. She said that if she met the slavers who had kidnapped and tortured her she would kneel and kiss their hands, because without them she would not have become a Christian and a religious.