During Sunday mornings at St. Josephine Bakhita Mission Parish, the singing is upbeat and energetic yet reverent. There is clapping, as well as expressions of “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” This was especially present as the parish community celebrated its third annual Founder’s Day Mass on Sunday, June 1 honoring St. Josephine Bakhita.
Visitors and decades-long parishioners alike experienced an atmosphere of warmth, love and Afrocentric culture and spirituality.
“You’re going to see something great here,” beamed Bishop John Dolan following the Founder’s Day Mass. “It’s [a church] packed with a lot of energy and a lot of spirit.”
Amid its distinctive Afrocentric quality, St. Josephine Bakhita Mission Parish welcomes worshippers of all ethnicities, cultures and races. Sunday Masses are regularly attended by 75-90 people, with about half being African American. On Founder’s Day, it was a standing-room-only crowd.
“All are welcomed. All are loved,” is the community slogan.
A beloved Black Catholic saint
Years of suffering, perseverance and, eventually, redemption — the story of St. Josephine Bakhita, which connects Black Catholics to their faith and the African-American experience whenever they meet for worship at the historic south Phoenix church that bears her name, is a compelling example of God’s healing power upon the soul and mind.
“Her story is amazing. It’s really a beautiful story,” said Fr. Andrew McNair, pastor of St. Josephine Bakhita Mission Parish and director of Black Catholic Ministry for the Diocese of Phoenix.
She exhibited “great generosity, humility, joy, peace and love,” added Auxiliary Bishop Eduardo Nevares.
Located a few minutes’ drive south of the downtown area, this stucco mission building with its outside covered patio is one of the diocese’s hidden gems — a simple physical setting that comes alive every Sunday with the sights and sounds of heartfelt worship and an atmosphere of connectedness.
“Your faith is planted, watered and nourished here, and you leave with a sense of ‘why I believe Catholicism is for me,’” said longtime parishioner Mary Skinner, who also is grand lady of the Knights of Peter Claver Ladies’ Auxiliary Court, St. Josephine Bakhita Court 369.
“It’s a small parish, but it has a big heart,” she said proudly. “People here will welcome you, love you and adore you.”
That heart can be traced directly to the church’s beloved namesake.
Born in 1869, in a small village in the Darfur region of Sudan, Josephine Bakhita was seven-or-eight years old when she was kidnapped while working in agricultural fields with her family.
Sold into slavery, she became the victim of torture by various owners, who branded her, beat her and cut her, rubbing salt in her fresh wounds — an experience that prompted her to later write, “I felt I was going to die at any moment.”
Though at the time she did not know Christ or the redemptive nature of suffering, she bore her torment valiantly.
She also developed an awe of the world and its Creator, expressing “a desire to see Him, know Him and pay Him homage.”
After being sold a total of five times, Bakhita was purchased by the Italian consul in Khartoum, who two years later took her to Italy to work as a nanny for one of his colleagues. That individual, Augusto Michieli, then sent Bakhita with his daughter to a school in Venice run by the Canossian Sisters, where Bakhita felt called to learn more about the Church, and was baptized.
When Michieli wanted to take Bakhita and his daughter back to Sudan, Bakhita refused, and the Italian courts ruled that, because the country did not recognize slavery, Bakhita could stay there, a free woman.
She continued her love of the Church and decided to join the Canossians in 1893, and was assigned to Northern Italy, where she dedicated her life to assisting her community and teaching others to love God until her death in 1947.
She was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 2000.
“The reason [St. Josephine Bakhita] resonates with African American Catholics is that she was a victim of slavery who overcame evil with goodness, and for all those people who have been hurt through the evil of human trafficking,” said Fr. McNair.
“It’s a sad story, but one of redemption.”
“What a beautiful example for each and every one of us to imitate in growing in the virtues that will help all of us to serve Christ in and through our brothers and sisters,” added Bishop Nevares. “It’s a beautiful expression of the Catholic faith.”
Honoring African culture
Inside the sanctuary, there is pan-African themed artwork, and throughout the nave, there are stained-glass windows depicting important Black Catholics, such as the venerable Fr. Augustus Tolton.
On the nave’s rear wall is a portrait and a brief biography, where visitors can learn about figures such as Thea Bowman, a religious sister, teacher, musician, liturgist and scholar, and the first African American woman to address the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In the sanctuary, on the wall directly behind the main altar is a colorful painting. Its centerpiece is an acacia tree, with a crucifix in front of the tree. In the background is a bright orange and yellow depiction of the sunset over the Sahara Desert.
“Native to Africa, the acacia is very resilient. It does well in dry, arid climates and symbolizes in so many ways the African experience and culture,” Fr. McNair said.
On either side of the painting are two small niches within the wall, one containing a small statue of Our Lady of Africa — the Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a Black woman — and the other, St. Martin de Porres, the Peruvian friar and patron saint of interracial justice, racial harmony and mixed-race people. A Dominican, de Porres founded an orphanage in the 1500s and ministered to African slaves brought to Lima.
Running along the top of the entire wall is a ribbon of red, black and green paint, the colors that Fr. McNair said symbolize the African continent. On the ceiling is a tri-color banner in the shape of the continent.
“Red is for the blood shed during the liberation of the African people. Black is for the different peoples of the African continent. And green symbolizes the prosperity gained through Africa’s natural resources,” Fr. McNair explained.
The parish plans several improvements, including Afrocentric Stations of the Cross and new flooring.
Mass is celebrated Monday through Thursday and Sunday. The church regularly prays the Litany of St. Josephine, a devotional prayer made to obtain a particular grace or blessing. Sunday Mass is live-streamed, and the parish will soon stream its daily Mass.
Veneration and connection
But one of the most treasured details in St. Josephine Bakhita Mission Church is a relic.
Encased in a golden reliquary upon a side altar in the sanctuary is a small fragment of one of St. Josephine’s bones, which visitors can venerate. It was donated by the Canossian Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Poor.
Other churches throughout the diocese house relics, including St. Timothy in Mesa, Ariz., whose reliquarium regularly displays 65 first- and second-class relics, and St. Bernadette in Scottsdale, Ariz.
There are “very few” Black Catholic churches anywhere with a first-class relic of a Black Catholic saint, Fr. McNair said.
Bishop Dolan reflected that relics play an important role in a Catholic’s life.
“That whole sense of personal touch with a holy person makes a difference,” said Bishop Dolan. “A person who has had a great devotion to the Lord in his or her life becomes not just a heroic example but a person who is also interceding through joining Christ at the right side of the Father to pray for us.”
Veneration of sacred relics has been a Church practice for centuries, going all the way back to Scripture. This includes the miracle of the woman subject to bleeding who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, as well as the healings recorded in the Acts of the Apostles that occurred after individuals were passed over by St. Peter’s shadow.
“Traditionally, when someone venerates a relic, the worshipper asks for some favor and seeks intercession of the saint,” Fr. McNair added.
Visitors can venerate the relic of St. Josephine Bakhita at the Phoenix church from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday thru Thursday or by appointment.
A church for all neighbors
A 2011 survey commissioned by the National Black Catholic Congress Office and the University of Notre Dame, found that out of nearly 21,000 U.S. parishes, roughly 800 were predominantly African American, while 76-percent were predominantly White or multicultural.
Established in 2022, St. Josephine Bakhita Mission Parish was previously known as St. Pius X and Black Catholics had gathered there for monthly Unity Masses for a number of years.
Andy Hardin, a 30-year parishioner said the intent always was to establish a home for Black Catholic families; a place they could always return to even if they grew up there and left the area.
“Many of us come from Black neighborhoods in other parts of the country where people mingled with each other, had Sunday neighborhood barbeques,” she recalled. “Black people don’t have that here. Understanding your own culture, you want to have someone who relates to what you are talking about.
“I’ve been able to watch [St. Josephine Bakhita] grow to what it is now: a place where you can meet new people, enjoy new friendships and know it’s under the umbrella of Jesus. When you think about the 33 years He lived and the many people He encountered, it makes you want to try to do a little of that in your own neighborhood.
“That’s what we’re supposed to be doing; meeting a little of Jesus in everyone we encounter.”
Fr. McNair welcomes and encourages anyone wanting to make a pilgrimage to the church to contact the parish office at (602) 250-8770 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
“We’d be more than happy to organize a pilgrimage.”
