Saint Josephine Bakhita

Bakhita was born around 1869 in the Darfur region of Sudan and was kidnapped by slave traders at about age seven, an experience so traumatic she later said she forgot her own birth name — "Bakhita," meaning "fortunate" in Arabic, was given to her by her captors. She was sold and resold through multiple owners over the following years, enduring severe abuse, before an Italian diplomat purchased her and eventually brought her to Italy. There, she was placed in the care of the Canossian Sisters in Venice, where she encountered Christianity for the first time and asked for baptism. When her legal owner later tried to reclaim her, an Italian court ruled that since slavery was illegal in Italy, she had in fact been free since her arrival — and she chose to remain with the Canossians, joining the order in 1896. She spent the rest of her life serving the community in Schio, known for her serene gentleness despite her early suffering, and was canonized in 2000.