Isidore Bakanja (c. 1887 – 15 August 1909) was a Congolese Catholic layman and bricklayer who suffered martyrdom in 1909 and was beatified on 24 April 1994 by Pope John Paul II.

Bakanja was baptised into the Roman Catholic Church at eighteen years of age through the ministry of Trappist missionaries in the Belgian Congo.

Bakanja had a great love for the Blessed Virgin Mary that he expressed through recitation of the rosary and by being invested in the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

His Belgian colonist employers had ordered him to cease sharing the gospel as well as remove the Brown scapular that he wore.

As a result of the beating and persistent ill treatment he received, Bakanja's wounds became severely infected.