The Church celebrates today St. Peter Claver, a Jesuit missionary who spent his life in the service of African slaves brought against their will to South America during the 17th century.
He joined the Jesuits as a young man and, while studying philosophy, he developed a friendship with an older Jesuit lay brother, Alphonsus Rodriguez. Although Alphonsus spent his days doing menial work as a door-keeper, he had immense insight into spiritual matters and encouraged Peter to become a missionary in the Spanish colonies. Pope Leo XIII would later canonize both men on the same day, almost two centuries later.
St. Peter dedicated his missionary life to serving the slaves in Cartagena, a port city in present-day Colombia. Despite Pope Paul III’s repeated condemnations of slavery during the previous century, European colonists continued importing African slaves, often sold by their own rulers, to work on plantations and in mines. Those who survived the ship journey could expect to be worked to death by their masters.
Quite heroically, St. Peter was determined to sacrifice his own freedom to bring material aid and eternal salvation to the African slaves, in keeping with his vow to become “the slave of the blacks forever.” The young priest made and kept this resolution despite his own health problems and the language barrier between himself and the population he served.
In order to minister to speakers of a foreign language, St. Peter often employed pictorial representations of Catholic truths. He also communicated by means of generosity and expressions of love, giving food and drink to the ailing workers and visiting them during bouts of sickness that often proved fatal. “We must speak to them with our hands,” he reasoned, “before we try to speak to them with our lips.”
St. Peter Claver’s work came to an end with his death in 1654. He had cared for, Baptized, and taught the faith to more than 300,000 people during his four decades in Cartagena.
