September 9th, St.Peter Claver

St.Peter Claver

A painting, by an eye witness, Johann Moritz Rugendas, depicts a scene, below, the deck of a slave ship. A thousand arrived every month, to the port of Cartagena, Colombia. Into the vortex of this undignified trade center, where the black slaves arrived famished, diseased, and hopeless, the young Jesuit, Peter Claver, ventured in, as the slave of the slaves, which subsequently made him, the saint of the slaves.

Welcome to the saint of the day. Today the 9th September the Church celebrates the feast of St.Peter Claver

A native of Spain, the young Jesuit Peter Claver left his homeland Catalonia, forever in 1610, to be a missionary in the colonies of the New World. He sailed into Cartagena, a rich port city where he was ordained in 1615.

Peter had joined the Jesuits at the age of 20. While doing his philosophy at Palma , Mallorca, he came to know the porter of the college, St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, a lay brother known for his holiness and gift of prophecy. Rodriguez felt that he had been told by God that Claver was to spend his life in service in the colonies of New Spain, and he frequently urged the young student to accept that calling.

Peter Claver's predecessor, Jesuit Father Alfonso de Sandoval, had devoted himself to the service of the slaves for 40 years before Claver arrived to continue his work, declaring himself "the slave of the Negroes forever."

As soon as a slave ship came into the port, Peter Claver moved into its infested hold to minister to the ill-treated and worn out passengers. After the slaves were herded out of the ship like chained animals and shut up in nearby yards to be gazed at by the crowds, Claver plunged in among them with medicines, food, bread, brandy, lemons and tobacco. With the help of interpreters he gave basic instructions and assured his brothers and sisters of their human dignity and God's saving love. During the 40 years of his ministry, Claver instructed and baptized an estimated 300,000 slaves.

His apostolate extended beyond his care for slaves. He became a moral force, indeed, the apostle of Cartagena. After four years of sickness which forced the saint to remain inactive and largely neglected, he died on September 8, 1654. The city magistrates, who had previously frowned at his solicitude for the black outcasts, ordered that he should be buried at public expense and with great pomp.

He was canonized in 1888, and Pope Leo XIII declared him the worldwide patron of missionary work among black slaves.

He is considered a heroic example of what should be the Christian practice of love, and of the exercise of human rights.