Biggest Lesson for Pastoral Caregivers in Africa from Blessed Isidore Bakanja

Young Bakanja was always seen with a rosary and scapular owing to his deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and he always looked for opportunities to share his new-found faith with others. This way, many people came to know him as a Catechist.

He found a job as a domestic servant in one settlement that was owned by a large Belgian company that controlled the rubber plantations in the region. 

Many of the agents were avowed atheists, who hated the missionaries because of the latter's defense of the natives' rights and their denouncing of injustices perpetrated against them. 

Isidore soon experienced the hatred of the agents for Catholicism, and when he asked for leave to return home, he was denied permission. Instead, he was told to stop teaching his fellow workers how to pray.

One agent told him, “You'll have the whole village praying and no one will want to work.”

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He was told to discard his scapular. When he did not, he was flogged. 

The second time when he insisted upon keeping his scapular, the agent jumped at him, tore the scapular from his neck, and instructed that he be flogged severely.

The whip with which he was flogged was made of elephant hide with nails protruding at the end. In pain, he cried, “My God, I'm dying.”

Those flogging him are said to have lost count of the number of times they hit him. When they were done, young Bakanja’s back is said to have been “one open wound” and “some of his bones were exposed.”

Bakanja is said to have been thrown, legs chained, into a hut for processing rubber. Later, he was banished to another village; but because he could not walk, he fell by the wayside and hid in the forest.

An inspector who saw the state that Bakanja was in narrated, “I saw a man come from the forest with his back torn apart by deep, festering, malodorous wounds, covered with filth, assaulted by flies. He leaned on two sticks in order to get near me -he wasn't walking; he was dragging himself.”

The inspector took Isidore to his own settlement, hoping to help him heal. But Isidore felt death in his bones. 

He told someone who had pity on him, “If you see my mother, or if you go to the judge, or if you meet the priest, tell them that I am dying because I am a Christian.”

Thereafter, two missionaries spent several days with Blessed Bakanja. When they urged him to forgive the agent, he assured them that he had already done so and that he nursed no hatred for him. 

And when the missionaries urged young Bakanja to pray for the agent who had ordered that he be assaulted, he said, “Certainly I shall pray for him. When I am in heaven, I shall pray for him very much.”

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Bakanja is said to have lived six more months, nursing painful wounds before he died on either 8 or 15 august 1909, rosary in hand and the scapular of Our Lady of Mt Carmel around his neck.

Agnes Aineah is a Kenyan journalist with a background in digital and newspaper reporting. She holds a Master of Arts in Digital Journalism from the Aga Khan University, Graduate School of Media and Communications and a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics, Media and Communications from Kenya's Moi University. Agnes currently serves as a journalist for ACI Africa.