Josephine Bakhita was born in the Sudan around 1869. Kidnapped by Arab slave traders when she was about seven years old, for many years Josephine was bought and sold, treated cruelly – “During all the years I stayed in that house, I do not recall a day that passed without some wound or other. When a wound from a whip began to heal, other blows would pour down on me.”
Josephine ended her time as a slave with an Italian family. It was there that she found a haven with the Canossian Sisters in Venice and, in 1889, an Italian court ruled that she had never legally been a slave. In 1896, she professed her vows as a Canossian Sister.
Josephine Bakhita was canonized in 2000. Saint Josephine Bakhita is venerated as a modern African saint and is the Patron Saint of those who suffer from Human Trafficking and modern-day slavery.
