St. Josephine Bakhita Parish celebrates inaugural Mass

Bishop Earl Fernandes celebrated a Saturday Vigil Mass for the newly formed St. Josephine Bakhita Parish at Columbus St. Elizabeth Church on June 15.

St. Josephine Bakhita Parish, 6077 Sharon Woods Blvd., was recently established from a merger of St. Anthony, St. Matthias and St. Elizabeth churches on the north end of Columbus as part of the diocese’s Real Presence Real Future initiative.

Concelebrating the Mass with the bishop for a large congregation were Father Tony Davis, the parish’s pastor; Father Hillary Ike, the parish’s associate pastor; Father Thomas Petry, former pastor at St. Anthony Church; Father Charles Cotton, former pastor at St. Elizabeth; Father Ramon Owera, former administrator at St. Elizabeth; and visiting priests. Assisting were Deacons Dean Racine and Jason Nguyen.

St. Anthony closed last October. While St. Matthias Parish has closed, the school will continue to remain open, and the worship space will be used for Masses and events associated with various ethnic communities as well as the school.

Bishop Fernandes mentioned the ethnic diversity of the new parish in his homily.

Among the nationalities represented in the congregation were Filipinos, Vietnamese, Africans and Indians.

“You can see in the clergy here present the great diversity in the Church,” he said. “Our Church is a Catholic Church, a universal church, and God calls people of every race, nation and people to belong to Him, to be His own, to be truly children of God.

“You see it in the clergy and you see it in the people God gathered here today. From all walks of life, from all nations, God has called us here to worship and adore Him. …. We can be grateful for the sacrifices that people made to give us faith, to hand on the faith, so that we might grow, as St. Paul says, ‘to full stature in Christ.’”

The parish’s new patroness, St. Josephine Bakhita, was selected in part because she represents its ethnic diversity and because she is also the patron saint for victims of human trafficking.

She was born in Africa, kidnapped and enslaved in Sudan, enduring terrible beatings for years from slave owners, before she was taken to Italy. She eventually joined the Catholic Church after living with the Canossian Sisters. She professed to the orders and took her final vows in 1896, humbly serving the Lord until her death in 1947. Pope St. John Paul II canonized her in 2000.

“Someone once asked her [about the scars on her back], ‘What would you do if you met the man who did that to you?’” Bishop Fernandes said. “She said, ‘I would kiss his hands and his feet, for without that I would have never known my Heavenly Father.’ …

“St. Josephine is a patron of our time. Rather than attack, she rejoices that she has God as Father. She bears her cross, but she is also a person of hope in the Resurrection. How beautiful it would be if we could understand through her what it means to truly be a child of God — to not live bound in slavery, by sin, but to live in the freedom of the sons and daughters of God.”