Josefine Bakhita

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Josefine Bakhita (* 1869 in Olgossa, Sudan ; † February 8, 1947 in Schio ( Italy )) was an Italian nun of African descent. She is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church .

Life

Bakhita was born in the village of Olgossa in the western Sudanese province of Darfur . Her father was the brother of the village chief. She was abducted by Arab slave hunters at the age of six or seven and sold five times in the markets of al-Ubayyid and Khartoum over the next eight years . The trauma of the kidnapping made her forget her own name, so that today only the name of her is known that was given to her by the slave hunters ( Bakhita , the Arabic word for "happy"), as well as the name she was given when she was baptized and Accepted confirmation .

Changing owners

During her imprisonment, Bakhita often suffered brutality. The son of one of her owners hit her so badly that she could not get up from her straw bed for a month. She later described the worst memory of her fourth owner, a Turkish general, for whose mother-in-law she had to perform slave services. This general had them - like his other slaves - marked as his property by a kind of scarification and tattooing . In her notes, which she wrote down in Italian many years later , she describes how a woman brought flour , salt and a blade, drew patterns on her skin, cut into it, and then filled the wounds with salt to create permanent scarring. More than 60 such cuts were made on her chest, stomach and arms.

Sale to Italy

Bakhita's last buyer was the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who treated her well and apparently planned to release her, but then handed the now 16-year-old over to his friend Augusto Michieli. She was brought to Italy to be the nanny of Michieli's daughter Mimmina. In 1888 or 1889 Bakhita and Mimmina were placed in the care of the Canossians in Venice , while the Michielis moved to the Red Sea for business reasons. In 1890 Bakhita was baptized at her request and took the name Giuseppina Margarita (Josefine Margaret) at the baptism . When the Michielis wanted to take their daughter and Josefine back home, she didn't want to. Mrs. Michieli wanted to force her to return to her household, but the head of the religious school that Josefine and Mimmina had attended in Venice went to court. An Italian court found that slavery had been legally abolished in Sudan before she was born and that Italian law did not recognize slavery regardless, so that by law Josephine was never a slave. In the meantime, Josefine had reached the age of majority and was able to determine her own life for the first time. She decided to stay with the Canossians.

Entry into the order

On December 8, 1895, Sr. Josephine made her perpetual profession . In 1902 she was sent to a house in Schio in the northern Italian province of Vicenza , where she lived the rest of her life. Only between 1935 and 1938 did she leave Schio to help prepare young sisters for work in Africa in Milan .

During her 45 years in Schio, Sr. Josefine worked mostly at the gate of the monastery, so that she had lively contact with the population. Her friendliness, her pleasant voice and her steady smile became well known, and to this day she is known in Vicenza as la nostra madre moretta ("our coffee-brown mother"). Her order recognized her special charisma and encouraged her to write down her memories and to talk about her experiences; this made them known throughout Italy. Her last years of life were marked by pain and illness, but she kept her cheerfulness, and when asked how she was doing, she always smiled and replied, “as the Lord wishes”. In her final days she was mentally transported back to her years of slavery and screamed in her delirium, "Please, loosen the chains ... they are so heavy".

Sr. Josefine Bakhita died on February 8, 1947. During the three days that her body was laid out, thousands came to show their respect. Voices in favor of her canonization were immediately raised and the process of beatification began in 1959, just twelve years after her death. On December 1, 1978 Pope John Paul II raised Josephine Bakhita to the position of venerable servant of God . On May 17, 1992, Pope John Paul beatified Josephine Bakhita and set February 8 as her feast day . Josephine Bakhita was canonized on October 1, 2000. She is considered the patron saint of the Catholic Church in Sudan .

See also

literature

Web links and sources

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In seguito la si vide spesso baciare il fonte battesimale e dire: "Qui sono diventata figlia di Dio!" Vatican website (ital.)
  2. ↑ From then on, she was often seen kissing the baptismal font and saying: “Here, I became a daughter of God!” Vatican website
personal data
SURNAME Bakhita, Josefine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Giuseppina Margarita (baptismal name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sudanese saint
DATE OF BIRTH 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Olgossa , Darfur, Sudan
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1947
Place of death Italy