Fr. Peter Claver came to the Americas as a Jesuit missionary in the early years of the 17th century. He was one of the first people to speak out against slavery in the Americas and the inhumane treatment of those enslaved. The Spanish and Portuguese were the first to bring African slaves to the Americas, in conditions so inhumane that it would be hard for us to imagine today. Some accounts of St. Peter Claver’s life say that when the slave ships arrived at Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), the people were starved and brutalized, and he was often the one person who would go aboard the slave ships and take food, water, and some comfort in a time of such terror. Sadly, the slave trade persisted in Latin America and North America despite the repeated condemnation of Pope after Pope.
People accused St. Peter and his Jesuit companions of hypocrisy, and uttered all kinds of false charges against them. One the things they were accused of was profaning the sacraments, because they said that he was “giving the sacraments to creatures who did not have souls.” For his part, St. Peter Claver said “I am the slave of the blacks forever.” He regularly risked his own life to bring the sacraments as well as sustenance to people who had been abandoned and forgotten by all of the society in which they lived. It would be fair to call him the first public abolitionist in the Americas. In his lifetime he is said to have baptized over 300,000 enslaved people. May God give us a fraction of the love and concern for abandoned and forgotten people that St. Peter Claver had.
For more: https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-peter-claver/
Let us pray. “O God, who made Saint Peter Claver a slave of slaves and strengthened him with wonderful charity and patience as he came to their help, grant, through his intercession, that, seeking the things of Jesus Christ, we may love our neighbor in deed and in truth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
