September 9 -- Feast of Saint Peter Claver

Peter was known as the Slave to the Slaves and the Servus Aethioporum (Slave to the Ethiops, a general word for all Africans). Although he was born in Catalonia, Spain and educated at the Jesuit college in Barcelona, he requested an assignment to New Granada (now Colombia) and stayed for the remainder of his life.

In the early 1600s, ten thousand slaves were being imported to the Americas each year, and another five thousand were dying at sea. Those who survived the crossing arrived filthy, malnourished, ill, and terrified. Peter embraced the assignment of offering them citrus and water, and generally trying to comfort them as well as he could before they were sent to plantations. Many popes had condemned the slave trade and even the existence of slavery, but the Spanish (and other Europeans) were making far too much money to accede to the popes' prohibitions.

Peter also made regular rounds of the plantations near Cartegena, ministering to the slaves; he stayed with them in the slave quarters and shared what they ate, offering to perform marriages, baptisms, and funerals as well as providing religious instruction and basic medical care. Naturally, he was not popular among plantation owners and overseers, nor even his fellow Jesuits.

Peter also extended his ministry to the two hospitals in Cartegena, ministering to Protestants and Muslims as well as fellow Catholics. He was always on the look-out for converts, having done so well proselytizing the slaves. An archdeacon of London converted during Peter's visit to him in hospital.

He was about seventy years old when he contracted plague. His fellow Jesuits confined him to his cell and assigned an African to look after him, but provided no care themselves nor were they especially concerned with the neglect by his assigned caretaker. He staged a weak recovery, but was criticized for baptizing someone who had already been baptized so they re-confined him and forbade him from offering sacraments. He didn't complain, consoling himself with the knowledge that the Pope was sending another missionary to the slaves to replace him.

The Spaniards might not have enjoyed having him around criticizing them, but they did appreciate the level of his holiness. When he slipped into a coma in September 1654, folks raced to strip his cell of everything they could pry loose to keep (or sell) as a relic. When he died, he was laid out with full funeral honors. As news of his death spread, slaves also held their own memorial services for him. I figure we know which service he would have chosen to attend (if he had the choice).

The two photos above show the Peter Claver Memorial in Cartegena. On the right is the memorial sculpture itself. On the left is the same sculpture with two humans standing in as additional slaves.