St. Josephine Bakhita, patron of human trafficking victims, teaches us hope

St. Josephine Bakhita, whose feast is celebrated on Feb. 8, was kidnapped at a young age and sold into slavery. She experienced firsthand the horrors of humanity, but later, after encountering Christianity, discovered a profound sense of hope.

Pope Benedict XVI highlighted her example in his 2007 encyclical on hope, Spe salvi, and narrated how she was introduced to the hope found in Jesus.

“Here, after the terrifying ‘masters’ who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of ‘master’ — in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name ‘paron’ for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a ‘paron’ above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme ‘Paron,’ before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her ‘at the Father’s right hand’.”

It was this love from God that gave her a newfound purpose in life and a hope that nothing could touch.

“Now she had ‘hope’ —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: ‘I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.’ Through the knowledge of this hope she was ‘redeemed,’ no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her ‘Paron.’”

Her newfound hope in God fueled every part of her being and she spread that hope to everyone she met.

“[S]he made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had ‘redeemed’ her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.”

When Sister Josephine Bakhita died in 1947, thousands of mourners came to pay their respects over three days. The people of her town said that she was a saint. Pope John Paul II canonized her in 2000.

During periods of difficulty, we can look to the life of St. Josephine Bakhita and ask her to instill in us a supernatural hope that endures any trial.

Praying to St. Josephine for victims of modern-day slavery

While slavery has been illegal in most places for more than a hundred years, it still exists today, though often under the radar. And humans around the world, including children, continue to be trafficked as objects to be bought and sold for a price.

The International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking, established by Pope Francis in 2015, is held each year on Feb. 8, the feast day of St. Josephine Bakhita.

Below is a prayer asking for St. Bakhita’s intercession for present-day victims of slavery and trafficking:

O St. Josephine 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.
Amen.

This article was written by Philip Kosloski for Aleteia. It has been adapted by Jersey Catholic for the 2026 observance of the International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking.

Featured image: A file photo shows an image of St. Josephine Bakhita, a former Sudanese slave who became a nun, hanging from the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica. The Church celebrates International Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking Feb. 8, the feast day of St. Bakhita, who was kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery in Sudan and Italy. (OSV News photo/Paolo Cocco, Reuters)