Conclusion
DECLARED as a free woman to determine what she desires, Josephine Bakhita was baptized, confirmed and received the first Holy Communion at the hands of His Eminence Domenico Agostini on January 9, 1890. In the Institutes tradition, her godparents were Venetian aristocrats Count Marco Avogadro di Soranzo and his wife Countess Josephine. She was named Giuseppina, Margherita Fortunata (Josephine, Margaret Fortunate).
The road to holiness
As a catechumate, she felt a call to be a religious, gave herself to the Lord in the Institute of Saint Magdalene of Canossa.
As an aspirant to the religious life, she was interviewed by a high Ecclesiastic as mandated by the Cannon Law in those years.
The new Cardinal Patriarch of Venice, Giuseppe Sarto (Saint Pope Pius X) who had probably heard about her from his friends Illuminato Cecchini and Patriarch Agostini, examined Bakhita.
On January 7, 1893, Bakhita joined the Novitiate in Venice. On December 8, 1896, she went to Verona to pronounce her vows. Unable to read and write, she memorized her Prayer Manual and the Rules of the Institute by heart.
Sis. Bakhita discharged her duties with joy, humility and availability, especially with the elderly and sick sisters. When praised, filled with gratitude, she joins her hands and answers, “Thank you, thank you, you really do me an act of charity.”
When reminded to do things she forgot, her answer was always the same,“Oh poor me. My memory is so weak. Please forgive me. One moment and I will prepare everything.”
She was assigned in the refectory, cellar, sacristy and kitchen, as well as opening and closing the doors.
When the convent was requisitioned as a field hospital in World War I, she did not join the sisters in Mirano or other houses. She stayed and was assigned as cook and sacristan. Her disposition and kind reproach to the sick and dying soldiers, wounded in body and spirit, was gentle, “soothing the most atrocious pains.”
It was a great comfort for those about to undergo surgery and the dying soldiers to see Bakhita at their bedside.
Her superior, Sis. Walburga Riccheri, wrote: “She was full of solicitude and tenderness. She aimed at reaching their souls. A number of these men, after recovering and returning home, kept corresponding with her for many years.
Another of her superiors, Sor. Anna Della Costa, described Bakhita as one with a real gift for consoling people. “She seemed to inject in them her own strength and serenity.”
In 1927 she returned to Venice for her final vows. At the request of her superior, she was interviewed, and her biography was published in Storia Meraviglioso, which was an enormous success. It was not easy for Mother Moretta, the black sister, to talk of her sufferings as a slave of cruel masters. But, talk she did, in obedience to her superior, to crowds in Italian missions, church squares, parish halls, convents and schools, candidly, calmly with serenity.
Aware that she was the “object of excessive curiosity” and labeled as a “poor beast” by others, she did not diminish her “unique charisma.”
She always emphasized how God loves her and everyone in the crowd. Often, she concluded her evangelization mission with: “Be good! Love the Lord. Pray for those unhappy souls who do not know Him.”
For four years, she spread the “missionary ideal from the north of Italy to Tuscany until Rome.”
For 54 years, her sisters esteemed her “inalterable sweet nature, exquisite goodness and deep desire to make the Lord known to others or deepen their faith.”
During her long painful years of sickness, when asked how she was, she would smile and say, “as the Master desires.”
During her agony, she relived her life as a slave and pleaded, “Please loosen the chains.”
She died on February 8, 1947, with a smile on her face saying: “Our Lady, Our Lady.”
The cause of her beatification started after her death. Proclaimed Blessed on December 1, 1978, she was canonized on October 1, 2000, by Pope John Paul II.
The “Universal Sister” is how Saint Pope John Paul II described her, a “witness of God’s fatherly love and luminous sign of the perennial relevance of the Beatitudes.”
Santiago is a former regional director of Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris College in Calauan, Laguna.