Journeying in Dignity: Listen, Dream, Act

This is the theme of the International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking. This day is held on February 8, a date established by Pope Francis on the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita.

Each year approximately 2.5 million people are victims of trafficking and modern day slavery. For the traffickers it has become one of the most lucrative illegal activities in the world.

Bakhita was born in Darfur Sudan in 1868. She had a happy carefree childhood until it was stolen from her by slave traders. Bakhita was nine years old when she was kidnapped.  She was so traumatized by the experience that she forgot, not only her name but her family name also. Literally everything was taken from her. The traders gave her the name Bakhita which means ‘Fortunate’.

Before her fortune changed she was passed from one set of traffickers to another. To them she was a commodity not a person. She was branded and tortured by her capturers. But her ‘fortune’ did change when she was sold to an Italian family in Khartoum Sudan . Even though life was better for her with this new family she was still their slave. The family moved to Italy and she asked to go with them. They agreed. While in Italy, she became a babysitter to the family of Augusto Michieli, and she accompanied him to Venice’s Institute of the Catechumens, run by the Canossian Sisters. While in Venice, Josephine felt drawn to the Catholic Church. It was here that she learned about God. Josephine told the sisters that she had always known about God, who created all things, and wanted to learn more about him.

 When the Michieli family decided to return to Sudan, they wished to take Josephine back with them, but she refused to go. The Canossian sisters and the patriarch of Venice intervened on her behalf to allow her to remain with the Sisters. The judge concluded that since slavery was illegal in Italy, she had actually been free since 1885.

To ask for her freedom must had demanded great courage on her part at that time. She legally obtained her freedom and became an Italian citizen.  She was baptized and chose the name Josephine.  Later she joined the Canossian sisters. She dedicated her live to the care of the poor.

At her canonization in 2000, Pope John Paul II said, “In St. Josephine Bakhita we find a shining advocate of genuine emancipation. The history of her life inspires not passive acceptance but the firm resolve to work effectively to free girls and women from oppression and violence, and to return them to their dignity in the full exercise of their rights.”

It is an amazing story of resilience, hope and grace on the part of this young woman. And it is no wonder she was chosen to highlight the International Day of Trafficking.

If you want to learn more about the situation in Ireland and become aware of how you can do your part to help, the following website is helpful.            www.aptireland.org

St. Josephine we continue to ask you to intercede for all those people who are enslaved by traffickers today in Ireland and the World.

Prayer

St. Josephine Bakhita, you were sold into slavery as a child and endured untold hardship and suffering. Once liberated from your physical enslavement, you found true redemption in your encounter with Christ and his Church.

 St. Bakhita, 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 whom man enslaves, let God set free.

Provide comfort to survivors of slavery and let them look to you as an example of hope and faith. Help all survivors find healing from their wounds. We ask for your prayers and intercessions for those enslaved among us.

Amen.
(published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a prayer to St. Josephine Bakhita)

 

Image taken from: https://ssjphila.org/saint-josephine-bakhita/ 

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