February 8 is the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita (1869-1947), the former slave who became a Canossian sister and the patron of Sudan and of the victims of human trafficking. Born in the Darfur region of Sudan, she was kidnapped by slave traders at the age of seven, sold five times in the markets of Sudan and Turkey, and bought in 1883 by the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who took her to Italy.
In Italy, Bakhita was entrusted to the Canossian sisters in Venice, and there she was baptised in 1890, taking the name Josephine Margaret Afortunata — "the fortunate one," she said, because what her captors called misfortune had brought her to Christ. She entered the Canossian sisters in 1896 and served for fifty years at the convent of Schio, near Vicenza, in the kitchen and the porter's lodge. Her autobiography, dictated in 1910, is one of the few first-person accounts of slavery in Sudan.
Bakhita died at Schio in 1947, was beatified in 1992 and canonized in 2000 by Pope John Paul II. Her body lies in the Church of the Holy Family at Schio. From Venice, where she was baptised, to Schio, where she lived and is buried, the February 8 feast is the feast of the slave who became the free daughter of God — the patron of Sudan and of all who are trafficked.
