They asked the child her name in the forest, and terror erased it. The men who took her called her Bakhita — lucky. It was meant as a charm. For a long time it only meant: still alive.
She was sold across Sudan, marked, and at last bought by an Italian consul who did not raise his hand. In Venice the Canossian Sisters taught her the God she had already suspected in the night sky. A court declared she had never legally been a slave. For the first time she was asked what she wanted. She wanted to stay. On 9 January 1890 she was baptised Josephine Margaret Fortunata — fortunate — by the man who would become Pope Pius X.
Years later a student asked what she would do if she met the men of the forest. She said she would kneel and kiss their hands, because without those years she would not have been a Christian or a sister. She was not blessing the crime. She was refusing a last slavery.
This little book is for anyone who has been handled by other people’s decisions. The story is told slowly, with its places and names attached. Read it in an evening. Then say, if you can, a smaller sentence than hers: they do not get to keep my soul.
A Silent Homilies booklet. Written to be read in one or two sittings.