All people are born free, yet the social context, the continent, and the country in which one is born can truly make a difference. Bakhita, in fact, has her freedom taken away for many years. Yet that “theft” does not have the last word, and she not only regains her freedom but discovers the freedom to be herself.

Kidnapping and slavery

She is born in Sudan, perhaps in 1869, and between the ages of 8 and 9 she is kidnapped and sold into slavery. So frightened is she that she forgets her name, and, by a cruel irony, she is called Bakhita, meaning lucky. Every time she escapes, she is recaptured, and new slave traders continually inflict all kinds of suffering on her. The greatest physical pain is the tattooing: in Khartoum, when she belongs to a Turkish general, her entire body is cut; as if that were not enough, each cut is sprinkled with salt so that the scars will remain visible forever. Bakhita remains between life and death for days.

In Italy

Put back on the market, she is bought by an Italian consular agent, Calisto Legnani, the first to treat her as a person. Bakhita remains in Legnani’s household as a domestic servant until 1884, when, while accompanying her employers to Italy, she is “given” to Maria Turina, the wife of Augusto Michieli, an Italian friend. Here Bakhita looks after Mimmina, their 3-year-old daughter.

The “Master”

It is the spring of 1885 when, through her acquaintance with Illuminato Checchini, the steward of the Michieli household, Bakhita meets the true “Master,” as she will call Jesus throughout her life.
Maria Turina must join her husband in Suakin and leaves the domestic servant and Mimmina in Italy, placing them with the Canossians in Venice. Here, Illuminato gives Bakhita a small silver crucifix: “When he gave it to me,” the Saint recounts, “he kissed it devoutly, then explained to me that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, had died for us. I did not know what it was, but driven by a mysterious force I hid it for fear that the lady would take it from me. Before that, I had never hidden anything because I was not attached to anything. I remember secretly looking at it and feeling something inside me that I could not explain.”

Baptism and religious vocation  

The Canossians introduce Bakhita to the Gospel, and she asks to be baptized. It is 1889, and the “mistress,” having returned to Italy, wants to take her with her to Africa. Bakhita refuses; she does not want to lose the “Treasure” she has just found, and, being in Italy, where the slave trade is not practiced, she permanently acquires what belongs to her: freedom.
After receiving Baptism, she develops the desire to live for her one and only “Master”: she joins the Canossians and becomes Sister Josephine Bakhita. The people she meets, and for whom she always has a kind word, call her “Mother Moretta.”
As the years pass, she suffers the effects of the brutality she endured as a slave (especially kicks and lashings): she develops severe arthritis and bronchial asthma. Confined to a wheelchair, she spends entire hours in prayer before the tabernacle. Just before she dies, on February 8, 1947, she exclaims: “How happy I am… Our Lady, Our Lady.”