St. Peter Claver: Model of Racial Justice

On September 9, the Church celebrates the feast of St. Peter Claver, a Jesuit missionary to South America and an intrepid defender of African slaves.

Born in 1581 in Verdú, Spain, Claver joined the Society of Jesus at age 20 in 1602. Moved with love for the souls in the Americas who had never heard the name of Jesus, he braved the long journey across the Atlantic and went to Cartagena (modern day Columbia) in 1610. 

In his 1537 encyclical Sublimus Dei, Pope Paul III denounced slavery, but this mandate was not popular with the culture at the time, and the slave trade remained a prodigious enterprise. At his ordination to the priesthood in 1616, the young saint made a vow to be aethiopum semper servus, or the slave of the Africans forever.

Holding fast to this promise, Claver would enter slave-trade vessels to minister to those on board. Entering the putrid lower-decks, he would attempt to communicate with the slaves through translators and pictures. To the Africans who had been told that they would be eaten alive at the end of their journey, the saint became a voice of comfort and reassurance.

In addition to his peaceful presence, Claver helped the slaves’ mind and body, providing them with medicine, brandy, bread, lemons, and tobacco. To those who needed it, he gave the cloak off his back.

St. Peter described his experience one time on a slave trade boat in a letter: “In that way we covered a space to which we at last transferred the sick, by forcing a passage through bands of slaves. Then we divided the sick into two groups: one group my companion approached with an interpreter, while I addressed the other group. There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold, whose pulse could scarcely be detected. With the help of a tile we pulled some live coals together and placed them in the middle near the dying men. Into this fire we tossed aromatics. Of these we had two wallets full, and we used them all up on this occasion. Then, using our own cloaks, for they had nothing of this sort, and to ask the owners for others would have been a waste of words, we provided for them a smoke treatment, by which they seemed to recover their warmth and the breath of life. The joy in their eyes as they looked at us was something to see.  This was how we spoke to them, not with words but with our hands and our actions.”

Many miracles were attributed to St. Peter Claver. Healings were reported by those who had touched his cloak, and an aura of light sometimes surrounded him as he ministered to those in hospitals.

Despite his work, government officials despised him, and some would not enter a church where the saint had heard confessions of the African population.

Through all his work, Claver suffered from his weak constitution, which was aggravated by the warm, tropical climate in Cartagena. Well in his seventies, the holy man fell ill. His warden in the hospital was a bitter emancipated African, who physically mistreated and nearly starved him. Bearing all his suffering patiently for the Lord, he eventually passed to his eternal reward on September 8, 1654.

The reaction to this simple man of the Lord was extraordinary. The funeral was enormous, and the government officials who once detested him now offered to pay for it at the expense of the government.

Despite consistent illness and language barriers, St. Peter Claver baptized 300,000 Africans in his forty years of work. To put this in perspective, one would have to baptize over twenty people every day for four decades to match the saint.

He was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1888, and declared the patron saint of missionary work to Africans in 1896. 

Today, he stands as a stalwart defense against racism and injustice, and encourages us to look beyond the culture of the day, to embrace the often unpopular truths of Christ through His Church. Every action in his life was directed to “the greater glory of God,” and so may we, through imitation, come to join him as he continues his praise in heaven, forever singing Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.