St. Peter Claver

Their story

Peter Claver was born in 1580 in Catalonia, Spain, and joined the Jesuits at twenty. While studying on the island of Majorca, he befriended an elderly Jesuit brother, St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, the college doorkeeper, who encouraged him to go as a missionary to the Americas. In 1610 Peter arrived in Cartagena, in present-day Colombia, one of the largest slave markets in the New World, and he was ordained a priest there in 1616. Every year thousands of Africans arrived in Cartagena chained in the holds of slave ships, after a terrible voyage that many did not survive. When a ship came in, Peter hurried to meet it, bringing food, water, medicine and comfort. He went down into the filthy holds to care for the sick and dying, washing their wounds and treating them as brothers and sisters. With the help of interpreters he taught them about God's love, and he is said to have baptized hundreds of thousands. He called himself "the slave of the Africans forever." Peter also visited the enslaved on plantations, defended them against cruelty, and cared for the sick in hospitals and for prisoners. In his last years he was ill and largely forgotten, but he accepted it in peace. He died on September 8, 1654, and was canonized in 1888. He is a patron of those enslaved and of human rights.