Feb 8th St. Josephine Bakitha

 St. Josephine Bakhita

Patroness of Trafficking Victims

As human trafficking continues to be a supremely important issue during Pope Francis’ pontificate, with an estimated 20 million victims worldwide, St. Josephine Bakhita, enslaved during her own childhood, undergoing immense suffering throughout her adolescence before discovering the faith in her early 20s. She was baptized, and after being freed entered the Canossian Sisters in Italy.

February 8th, St. Josephine’s feast day, marks the fourth international day of prayer and reflection against human trafficking.

Biography

Born in 1869 in a small village in the Darfur region of Sudan, Bakhita was kidnapped by slave traders at the age of seven. So terrified that she could not even remember her own name, her kidnappers gave her the name, “Bakhita,” which means “fortunate” in Arabic.

This was the last time she saw her natural family, being sold and resold into slavery five different times.

Eventually, she was purchased by the Italian consul Calisto Legnani, who later gave her to a friend of the family, Augusto Michieli, who brought her to Italy as a nanny for his daughter. In the Italian families it was the first time she was not mistreated.

After being freed, and remaining with the Canossian Sisters in Italy, she dedicated her life to assisting her community and teaching others to love God. She died on February 8, 1947. She was beatified in 1992 and canonized in 2000 by St. Pope John Paul II.

“Realizing that this evil is but another manifestation of slavery and bondage, we choose to combat it in whatever ways possible as Anne-Marie Javouhey worked for the abolition of slavery in the society of her day.

To this end we will endeavor to direct our spiritual, financial, and human resources to educating ourselves and others about this evil and will do whatever is in our power to work for an end to this moral depravity.”

Catholic Social Teaching

“One of the most troubling of those open wounds (in the world) is the trade in human beings, a modern form of slavery. It violates the God-given dignity of so many of our brothers and sisters and constitutes a true crime against humanity.”  

— Pope Francis, November 7, 2016

“It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit.”  

— Catechism, pp 2414

Whatever insults human dignity, such as… slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed… they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.”  

— Gaudium et Spes, 1965

Human trafficking is a horrific crime against the basic dignity and rights of the human person. All efforts must be expended to end it. In the end, we must work together—Church, state, and community—to eliminate the root causes and markets that permit traffickers to flourish; to make whole the survivors of this crime; and to ensure that, one day soon, trafficking in human persons vanishes from the face of the earth.”

— USCCB, On Human Trafficking, 2007

Prayer to St. Josephine Bakihta

O St. Bakihta, assist all those 
who are trapped in a state of slavery.
Intercede with God on their behalf
So that they will be released from their
Chains of captivity.
Those who we enslave
Let God set free.