St. Peter Claver

The patron of all missionary enterprises among Negroes: a reading about St. Peter Claver from Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

He was born in Catalonia, about 1581, and as he showed fine qualities of mind and spirit was destined for the Church and sent to study at the University of Barcelona. Here he graduated with distinction [and entered] the Society of Jesus. He left Spain forever in April 1610, and was ordained priest at Cartagena, in what is now the republic of Colombia. By the time of his ordination the slave trade had been established in the Americas for nearly a hundred years, and the port of Cartagena was one of its principal centers, being conveniently situated as a clearing house. The trade had recently been given a considerable impetus, for the local Indians were not physically fitted to work in the gold and silver mines, and there was a big demand for Negroes from Angola and the Congo.

At this time the leader of the work among the Negroes was Father Alfonso de Sandoval, a great Jesuit missionary who spent forty years in the service of the slaves, and after working under him Peter Claver declared himself “the slave of the Negroes forever”. Although by nature shy and without self-confidence he threw himself into the work with method and organization. He enlisted bands of assistants, and as soon as a slave-ship entered the port he went to wait on its living freight. The slaves were disembarked and shut up in the yards. Into these yards or sheds St. Peter Claver plunged, with medicines and food, bread, brandy, lemons, tobacco to distribute among the Negroes, some of whom were too frightened, others too ill, to accept them. “We must speak to them with our hands, before we try to speak to them with our lips”, Claver would say. When he came upon any who were dying he baptized them, and then sought out all babies born on the voyage that he might baptize them. He had a band of seven interpreters, one of whom spoke four Negro dialects, and with their help he taught the slaves and prepared them for baptism, not only in groups but individually. He made use of pictures, showing our Lord suffering on the cross for the; above all he tried to instill in them some degree of self-respect, to give them at least some idea that as redeemed human beings they had dignity and worth, even if as slaves they were outcast and despised.

It is estimated that in forty years St. Peter Claver instructed and baptized over 300,000 slaves. When there was time and opportunity he took the same trouble to teach them how properly to use the sacrament of penance, and in one year is said to have heard the confessions of more than five thousand. Many of the stories both of the heroism and of the miraculous powers of St. Peter Claver concern his nursing of sick and diseased Negroes, in circumstances often that no one else, black or white, could face.

In 1650 he went to preach the jubilee among the Negroes along the coast, but sickness attacked his emaciated and weakened body, and he was recalled to the Jesuit residence at Cartagena. But here a virulent epidemic had begun to show itself, and one of the first to be attacked among the Jesuits was the debilitated missionary, so that his death seemed at hand. After receiving the last sacraments he recovered, but he was a broken man. For the rest of his life pain hardly left him, and a trembling in his limbs made it impossible for him to celebrate Mass. He perforce became almost entirely inactive, but would sometimes hear confessions, especially of his dear friend Doŋa Isabella de Urbina, who had always generously supported his work with her money. Otherwise he remained in his cell, not only inactive but even forgotten and neglected.

On September 6, 1654 he was taken very ill and became comatose. The rumor of his approaching end spread round the city, everyone suddenly remembered the saint again, and numbers came to kiss his hands before it was too late; his cell was stripped of everything that could be carried off as a relic. St. Peter Claver never fully recovered consciousness, and died two days later on the birthday of our Lady. The civil authorities who had looked askance at his solicitude for mere Negro slaves, and the clergy, who had called his zeal indiscreet and his energy wasted, now vied with one another to honor his memory.

St. Peter Claver was never again forgotten and his fame spread throughout the world: he was canonized in 1888 and was declared by Pope Leo XIII patron of all missionary enterprises among Negroes.