St. Peter Claver

The capture and transport of Africans to work in the "new world" of the Americas as slaves is a tragic story of exploitation. Yet amidst tragedy, there are opportunities for heroism. One Christian hero in the sordid story of black slavery is St. Peter Claver. Born in Catalonia, Spain, he joined the Jesuits in 1605 in Barcelona, and came to work in the missions in 1610, landing in Cartagena, Colombia, the center of the slave trade in the new world. Appalled at the dehumanization of the whole dirty business of slave trading, he took a new vow in addition to those he made in his religious profession--until his death, he was to be advocate and servant of those sons and daughters of God whom others regarded as little more than advanced animals. He insisted that Black slaves were truly equal in worth and dignity to the Europeans and baptized and instructed over 300,000 of them before he died in 1654. During his lifetime, he was regarded as dangerous by many and even sacrilegious by others, who thought he profaned the sacraments by administering them to beasts. Nevertheless, his memory was honored and he was finally canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1888. What follows is an excerpt from one of his letters.