Move to honour slave saint

BY ED LANGLOIS
A MOVE is under way to seek Vatican approval for a patron saint of human trafficking and slavery victims.
Brian Willis, a US Catholic from Portland, Oregon, who has worked for years to help women who have been forced into the sex trade said St Josephine Bakhita, a Sudanese slave-turned-nun, is the ideal saint for people whose labour and bodies are being exploited.
Trafficking does not require the crossing of international borders, because “you can be born and raised and live in the same house and be a trafficking victim,”said Mr Willis. “It is about exploitation.” Global Health Promise, an organisation Mr Willis founded in 2007, protects women and their children from the impact of trafficking, prostitution and sexual exploitation . It is working on establishing shelters for children in Nepal, plus a drop-in centre at St Vincent de Paul parish in downtown Portland. Mr Willis also works with End Child Prostitution and Trafficking, a group dedicated to combating sexual exploitation and trafficking of youth in the US. Also in Portland, Catholic Charities receives grants to work with foreign-born human trafficking victims, often young women sold as maids or prostitutes.
Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland and Mr Willis have written letters to Arch bishop Pietro Sambi, papal nuncio to the United States, suggesting that the cause of trafficking victims would benefit from the naming of a patron saint. The letters will then be sent on to the Vatican.
Mr Willis told the Catholic Sentinel newspaper of the Portland archdiocese that he also hoped that February 8 — St Josephine’s feast day becomes an annual day of prayer for victims of human trafficking and slavery. “Her case is pertinent today,” said Mr Willis, because slavery still endures.
Born to a wealthy Sudanese family in 1869, she was kidnapped by slave traders and given the Arabic name Bakhita by her captors. Ironically, the name means “fortunate”. She was sold several times and was handled brutally. She managed to escape once, but was captured and sold again.
In 1883, the Italian consul in Khartoum bought Bakhita. Two years later he took her to Italy and gave her as a present to a friend, Augusto Michieli. Bakhita worked as the family’s nanny and, with the family’s daughter, began taking religious education classes taught by the Canossian Daughters of Charity in Venice.
In 1890 she joined the Catholic Church and took the name Josephine. The family tried to take Josephine back to Africa, but an Italian court ruled that she was free since slavery was illegal in Italy. She then became a nun.