Biography of Saint Peter Claver

Saint Peter Claver

Also known as

• Pedro Claver Corberó
• Slave of the Blacks
• Slave of the Slaves

Memorial

• 9 September
• 8 September (New Cartagena, Colombia)

Profile

Farmer‘s son. Studied at the University of Barcelona. Jesuit from age 20. Priest. Influenced by Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez to become a missionary in America. Ministered, physically and spiritually, to slaves when they arrived in Cartegena, converting a reported 300,000, and working for humane treatment on the plantations for 40 years. Organized charitable societies among the Spanish in America similar to those organized in Europe by Saint Vincent de Paul.

Born

• 1581 at Verdu, Catalonia, Spain

Died

• 8 September 1654 at Cartegena, Colombia of natural causes

Beatified

• 21 September 1851 by Pope Blessed Pius IX

Canonized

• 15 January 1888 by Pope Leo XIII

Patronage

• African missions (proclaimed in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII)
• African-Americans
• against slavery
• black missions
• black people
• foreign missions
• inter-racial justice
• Negroes
• race relations
• slaves
• Missionary Sisters of Saint Peter Claver
• Colombia
• Accra, Ghana, archdiocese 
• Lake Charles, Louisiana, diocese 
• Shreveport, Louisiana, diocese 
• Witbank, South Africa, diocese 

Readings

We must speak to [slaves] with our hands by giving, before we try to speak to them with our lips. – SaintPeter Claver

To love God as He ought to be loved, we must be detached from all temporal love. We must love nothing but Him, or if we love anything else, we must love it only for His sake. – Saint Peter Claver

To do the will of God, man must despise his own; the more he dies to himself, the more he will live to God. – Saint Peter Claver

Yesterday, 30 May 1627, on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, numerous blacks, brought from the rivers of Africa, disembarked from a large ship. Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what else, we hurried toward them. We had to force our way through the crowd until we reached the sick. Large numbers of the sick were lying on the wet ground or rather in puddles of mud. To prevent excessive dampness, someone had through of building up a mound with a mixture of times and broken pieces of bricks. This, then, was their couch, a very uncomfortable one not only for that reason, but especially because they were naked, without any clothing to protect them. We laid aside our cloaks, therefore, and brought from a warehouse whatever was handy to build a platform. In that way we covered a space to which we at last transferred the sick, by forcing a passage through bands of slaves. Then we divided the sick into two groups: one group my companion approached with an interpreter, which I addressed the other group. There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold, whose pulse could scarcely be detected. With the help of a tile we pulled some live coals together and placed them in the middle near the dying men. Into this fire we tossed aromatics. Then, using our own cloaks, for they had nothing of the sort, and to ask the owners for others would have been a waste of words, we provided for them a smoke treatment, by which they seemed to recover their warmth, and the breath of life. The joy in their eyes as they looked at us was something to see. This was how we spoke to them, not with words but with our hands and our actions. And in fact, convinced as they were that they had been brought here to be eaten, any other language would have proved utterly useless. Then we sat, or rather knelt, beside them and bathed their faces and bodies with wine. We made every effort to encourage them with friendly gestures and displayed in their presence the emotions which somehow naturally tend to hearten the sick. After this we began an elementary instruction about baptism, that is, the wonderful effects of the sacrament on body and soul. When by their answers to our questions they showed they had sufficiently understood this, we went on to a more extensive instruction, namely, about the one God, who rewards and punishes each one according to his merit, and the rest. Finally, when they appeared sufficiently prepared, we told them the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Passion. Showing them Christ fastened to the cross, as he is depicted on the baptismal font on which streams of blood flow down from his wounds, we led them in reciting an act of contrition in their own language. – from a letter by Saint Peter Claver