Josephine Bakhita

Josephine Margaret Bakhita (ca. 1869 – 8 February 1947) was a Sudanese-Italian Canossian nun who lived in Italy for 45 years, after having been a slave in Sudan. In 2000 she was declared a saint by the Catholic Church.

• Be good, love the Lord, pray for those who do not know Him. What a great grace it is to know God!
  • Quoted in "Josephine Bakhita (1869-1947)", The Holy See.

• If I were to meet those men who abducted me, or even those who tortured me, I would kneel and kiss their hands, for it that hadn’t happened, I would not be a Christian and a religious today.
  • Quoted in "St. Josephine Bakhita, Virgin", Vatican News.

• I pity them! No doubt they were unaware of the anguish they caused me. They were the masters and I was the slave. Just as it is natural for us to do good, so it is natural for them to behave as they did behave to me. They did so out of habit, not out of wickedness.
  • Quoted in "Goodness and missionary zeal", The Holy See.

• Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself: Who could be the Master of these beautiful things? And I felt a great desire to see him, to know Him and to pay Him homage...
  • Quoted in "Josephine Bakhita (1869-1947)", The Holy See.

• When a person loves another very much, she greatly wished to meet that person. Why then should I be afraid of death? Death brings us to God.
  • Quoted in "Goodness and missionary zeal", The Holy See.

• Encyclopedic article on Josephine Bakhita on Wikipedia