19th–20th century
Feast: February 8
Kidnapped at seven, sold five times, scarred with sixty razor cuts by a slave owner — she forgave them all and said she'd thank her kidnappers for leading her to God.
The slavers who kidnapped her asked her name. She was so traumatized she had forgotten it. They called her 'Bakhita' — Arabic for 'fortunate' — a name that was either cruel irony or, as she later saw it, prophecy. She was about seven years old when she was taken from her family in Darfur and sold into slavery. Over the next twelve years, she was bought and sold five times. One owner tattooed her with sixty razor cuts, rubbing salt into the wounds to create raised scars. Another beat her daily. She ended up in the household of an Italian consul, who brought her to Italy in 1885. There, while staying with the Canossian Sisters in Venice as caretaker for his daughter, Bakhita encountered Christianity for the first time. She described the experience simply: 'Seeing the sun, the moon, and the stars, I said to myself: Who could be the Master of these beautiful things? And I felt a great desire to see Him.' When her employer tried to take her back to Sudan, Bakhita refused. Italian courts ruled that since slavery was illegal in Italy, she was free. She was baptized, took the name Josephine, and entered the Canossian order. She spent the next fifty years as a cook, seamstress, and doorkeeper, telling her story to anyone who asked. She died in 1947, whispering, 'The chains are too heavy.'