A copy of this portrait of Saint Sister Bakhita is in the
“El Obeid Cathedral” in El Obeid, Sudan :
Saint Sister Bakhita
Saint Sister Bakhita was from the Daju tribe. She was born in the Darfur village of Olgossa, Sudan in 1869 and died in Schio on February 8, 1947. Her father was the brother of the village chief. There, she grew up with her parents, her three brothers and two sisters, and another sister that was her twin sister. When she was a little girl, while helping her parents in the fields, her eldest sister was looking after an infant at home and was abducted. Bakhita said: “I remember how much my mother was crying and how much we too were crying.” Bakhita said about when she was later abducted when searching for herbs: “I was about 7 years old when one early morning, I walked around the fields, a bit far away from home, with a companion. Suddenly, we saw two strangers appear from behind a fence. One of them told my companion: ‘Let the small girl (Bakhita) go into the forest to pick me some fruits. Meanwhile, you continue on your walk. We’ll catch up with you soon.’ He wanted to fool my companion so that she wouldn’t give the alarm while they were capturing me. I, of course, did not suspect anything and hurried to obey, which my mother had accustomed me to do. When in the forest, I saw two persons behind me. One of them moving quickly and 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.” Bakhita means: “Fortunate one,” a name given by the same slave trader that forcefully removed the seven-year-old girl from her family and village. Bakhita was taken to the town of El Obeid and held as a slave by the slave traders that had abducted her. Then, she was sold to a merchant of slaves and she tried to escape, but did not succeed.
She was forced to endure long marches chained and deprived of food and water.
In 1879, 10 years old, she was sold again in El Obeid. In 1882, 13 years old, she went with her owner to Khartoum. This third owner, in Khartoum, treated her the worst with humiliations and tortures. Her most terrifying memory was that of her third owner having her in common with all his other slaves. One day that her owner, after a dispute with his wife, had Bakhita whipped at the same time with another slave by the soldiers. Bakhita had said: “They left us bathed in blood. The whip had even ripped the skin of one of the muscles and made a deep wound.” The cruelty of the daughter of the owner, seeing Bakhita and other slaves were not yet tattooed, called a woman to mark them by a process resembling both scarification and tattooing as to have them belong to him. In her memoirs, she remembered that a dish of white flour, a dish of salt and a blade were brought by the woman, who drew patterns on her skin and then cut deeply along the lines and these wounds were treated with salt and flour to ensure permanent scarring. More than sixty patterns were cut into her breasts, abdomen and arms. They had made 114 marks cut into her body and treated for one month placing salt into the wounds. She had said: “I felt I was going to die any moment, especially when they rubbed me in with the salt.” Her third owner, an Ottoman general, was preparing to return to Turkey and auctioned his slaves with Bakhita in Khartoum. Her fourth and last buyer was the Italian Consul Calisto Legani. He bought her in the Khartoum slave market in 1883 at the age of 14 years old. Bakhita said: “This time, I really was the fortunate one, because the new master was a very good man and started to like me. I was not punished or whipped, so that it all seemed unreal to me, being able to enjoy such peace and tranquility.” In 1884, the Mahdist troops reached Khartoum and expulsed the Anglo-Egyptian colonists. At the end of 1884, the Consul fled the Sudan with his friend, Augusto Michieli, and other Europeans from Khartoum to Suakin on the Red Sea coast of the Sudan. In the middle of March 1885, they left Suakin for Italy. Bakhita begged Calisto Legani and finally was allowed to follow. Arriving in Genova, Italy, his friend’s wife, Turina, expected them at harbour. On the sight of the accompanying African servants, she begged to have one of them and she was given Bakhita. Bakhita had followed them to Zianigo, near Venice. She lived with this family for three years. Bakhita was the nursemaid and a friend of their daughter Alice (Minnina). In 1888, the family bought a hotel in Suakin and left for there. But they sent Minnina to stay at the Institute of the Catechumens in Venice of the Canossian Sisters and Bakhita, 19 years old, was also sent there as her companion. Nine months later and in 1889, when they returned to take back their daughter, the wife of Augusto Michieli insisted on that Bakhita went with her. Bakhita did not want to leave and she preferred to serve God together with the Canossa Sisters. However, the superior of the Institute contacted the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice and the Procurator of the King declared Bakhita legally free to make her own choice. It was with the Canossian Sisters that Bakhita became close to God. She stayed in the Institute and soon realized her vocation to become a Sister of the Order.
She was baptized on January 9, 1890, 21 years old, and received at the same time her First Communion and her Confirmation by the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice. She took the Christian name of “Giuseppina Margarita Afortunada.” It is told that Bakhita did have problems expressing her joy. But the joy she experienced through her religion was often observed at the font where she was baptized, kissing it and saying: “Here I became a daughter of God!” She had said that each day she spent at the Institute, became more and more aware of who this God was that had led her here to him in such a strange way.
On December 7, 1893, 24 years old, she became a novice, which is the entering a religious Order on probation, in the Institute of the Catechumen in Venice of the Canossian Sisters.
On Friday June 21, 1895, 26 years old, Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was given the clothing of a Sister.
On December 8, 1896, 27 years old, Bakhita did her first holy religious vows in the hands of the Superior of the Order in Verona; that is, consecrated herself to God forever whom she called: “The Master.”
In 1902, 33 years old, she was appointed to the Convent of the Canossian Sisters in Schio, in the northern Italian province of Vicenza, where she worked in sewing, cooking, embroidery, attending to the door and took care of the poor. When she was on duty at the door, she would gently lay her hands on the heads of the children and caress them who daily attended the school at the Convent. Her amiable voice, which had the inflection and rhythm of the music of her country, was pleasing to the little children, comforting to the poor and suffering and encouraging for those who knocked at the door of the Institute. Her humility, her simplicity and her constant smile won the hearts of all the people. The Sisters in the community esteemed her for her inalterable nature, her goodness and her deep desire to make God known. She started on her memoirs in 1910, and they were finally published in 1931.
In 1915, 46 years old, she contracted bronchial pneumonia.
On August 10, 1927, 58 years old, she took her final vow as a Sister by making her perpetual vow of profession in Venice. The holy Maddalena Gabriela di Canossa, which called it the Institute of the Daughters of Canossian Charity, had founded the congregation in 1808, but it is more commonly called the Canossa Sisters. Their aim was to educate poor girls, serve in hospitals and catechize in the parishes. Here, in the Institute, Bakhita learned to know the God of the Christians, and she said that here, she recognized the God that she had experienced in her heart without knowing who it was since she had been a child, and which had given her force while in slavery.
The only time she left Schio was from 1935 to 1938, where she was in Milan to aid young Sisters for work in Africa. And went to Rome with other Sisters to accompany new missionaries Sisters leaving for Addis Abeba in Ethiopia. After her the memoirs: Storia Meravigliosa transcribed by Ida Zanolini was released, which so much interest was shown that people came to Schio to see and talk to her. A characteristic topic of her mediation was: “Jesus, to know Him better, so as to love Him more and more.”
In 1942, 73 years old, she accidentally fell and lessened her ability to move and only could move with a staff.
Her last years were marked by arthritis that in every small movement it would give her pain. Also, she had contracted bronchial asthma, which gave her difficulty in breathing with coughing. She was always peaceful and in tranquility, abandoning everything to her Master. And if asked how she was, she would always smile and answer: “As the Master desires.”
On December 8, 1943, 74 years old, a feast was celebrated for 50 years of her religious life.
In 1946, she again contracted bronchial pneumonia and would lead her to her holy death.
On Sunday February 7, 1947, 78 years old, at 11:30 in the evening she received her Last Holy Communion. On Monday, February 8 at 3:30 in the afternoon, she received the Saint Viaticum. In her very last days, in her pains, she went through the terrible experience of slavery once again and said several times to the nurse taking care of her: “Please, loosen the chains they are so heavy.” On Monday February 8, 1947, between 6 to 6:30 in the evening surrounded by the Sisters at the Convent of the Canossian Sisters in Schio, Bakhita’s last words, with her last smile, were: “Quanto sono contento! La Madonna! La Madonna!” That is, “How happy I am! Our Lady! Our Lady!” At 8:10 in the evening, she passed away.
Her body was placed on display for three days at the Convent. Thousands passed her to express their mourning and respect. The mourning crowd is said to have noted that her joints stayed flexible all these three days, and mothers took her lifeless hand and placed it on the heads of their children, praying for salvation. In Schio, she was forever to be remembered as “Nostra Madre Moretta;” that is, “Our Brown Mother.” Her funeral was on Thursday February 11, 1947.
“Mary protected me even before I knew her.”
-Saint Bakhita
“I received the Sacrament of Baptism with such joy that only angels could describe.”
-Saint Bakhita
“O Lord (Jesus), if I could fly to my people and tell them of your Goodness at the top of my voice: O, how many souls would be won!”
-Saint Bakhita
“I can truly say that it was a miracle I did not die, because the Lord (Jesus) has destined
me for greater things.”
-Saint Bakhita
“In Heaven, I will go with Jesus and will obtain many graces. In Paradis, I will have power
and I will obtain for all many favours.”
-Saint Bakhita
To obtain a favour from Saint Sister Bakhita, say an Our Father,
Hail Mary and Glory Be for 9 days.
On December 1, 1978, Pope John Paul II signed the Decree of Heroic Virtue of the Servant of God, Giuseppina Bakhita.
On the occasion of her Beatification, May 17, 1992, Pope John Paul II praised her for “Leaving us a message of reconciliation and evangelic forgiveness in a world so much divided and hurt by hatred and violence. She, that was the victim of the worst injuries of all times, namely slavery, herself declared: “If I was to meet those slave raiders that abducted me and those who tortured me, I’d kneel down to them to kiss their hands, because, if it had not have been for them, I would not have become a Christian and a religious woman.”
She was canonized on October 1, 2000, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican by Pope John Paul II. During her process of her canonization the Pope commented: “Sister Bakhita has been given to us by the Lord (Jesus) as a universal Sister, so that she may reveal to us the secret of true happiness.”
She reposes in a glass tomb under the altar of the “Chiesa (Church) delle Canossiane” or known as the “Chiesa (Church) della Sacra Famiglia” built in 1850, at the Instituto figlie della carità Canossiane.
Chiesa della Sacra Famiglia
Via Fusinato, 51 - 36015 Schio
Provincia di Vicenza, Veneto
Italia
Feast Day of Saint Sister Bakhita is February 8.
The Holy Face of Jesus
from the Holy Shroud of Turin
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for the glory of God and Saint Bakhita.
Saint Sister Bakhita
Saint Sister Bakhita
Saint Sister Bakhita
Chiesa (Church) della Sacra Famiglia dell’Instituto
Canossiano with the tomb of Saint Sister Bakhita under the altar.