No Caesar, proudly entering the gates of Rome, could have looked more glorious than this exuberant saint, as he triumphantly marched with his Negroes down the main avenue of Cartagena. Due to the tremendous respect everyone has for the extraordinary Jesuit, these warnings always produced the desired fruit. Sitting on a rock, he would put his cloak over their shoulders, if it was cold, and hear their confessions. And if his love for her was great, her was no less for him. The walls of Cartagena silently echoed the solemn news as it was piously whispered in every corner, The Saint is dying! That is why Saint Peter Claver traveled such a lonely road. There were thirteen prisons in Cartagena. When he slept, or tried to sleep, he removed only the neck rope and the crown of thorns. The fleet of three galleons set sail on April 10, 1610. An institution, true- old as man himself- but, nevertheless, debasingly artificial and oftentimes cruel. Before parting from his beloved teacher, Claver was given a unique privilege, a privilege not granted to any other student, of keeping the spiritual notes that Brother Alphonsus had personally written for him. The U.S. bishops have invited Catholics to observe the day with fasting and prayer for an end to racism in the United States. For this extraordinary Jesuit, whose life we are about to study, the arrival of a slave ship was like the homecoming of a long lost son. The fatigue of this Lenten routine was aggravated unmercifully by the excruciating heat, the bite of mosquitoes, and the stinging itch of a full ankle length hairshirt that the holy confessor wore beneath his cassock next to his body. He was sent to study at the University of Barcelona. Community Redevelopment Agencies have proven historically to provide distressed communities with a better economy through improved infrastructure . Lima in Peru had five- Saint Rose, Saint Francis Solano, Saint Martin de Porres, Saint Turibius, and Saint John Massias. In spite of the condemnation of this great crime by Pope Paul III and by other lesser authorities, this supreme villainy, as slave trading was designated by later Pope Pius IX, continued to flourish, all that some of the owners did in response to the voice of the Church was to have their slaves baptized. I never heard him complain. He became almost entirely inactive, but would sometimes hear confessions, especially of his dear friend Doa Isabella de Urbina who had always generously supported his work with her money. He was a shining light in a dark time. In 1853, Ignatius Strecker, a native of Germany, arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, with his wife and nine children. And to save many souls.. One might say that Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez has at that moment planted his own soul into Saint Peter Claver. A galleon would contain, besides new immigrants, badly needed supplies and medicines, and of course, news and mail. These heroic acts of sublime love for his neighbor were by no means natural to Claver. Little is known of his early years. He kept a strict account of each and every slave he baptized. I entreat of those who read it, He said as he lay dying, to pray to God for a sinner, who having such a precious mine at his disposal, instead of drawing from it the pure gold of sanctity, has collected nothing but rust.. Then Jesus himself will say that he came into the world to make us, too, partake in the unity between him and the Father (cf. His troops- eighteen Negro interpreters, a Jesuit brother, a pious woman or two, and usually some prominent Cartagenian official. In the year 1650, Father Claver went to preach the Churchs jubilee year among the Africans working in the mines and plantations along the coast, but sickness attacked his weakened body, and he was recalled to the residence at Cartagena. Peter Claver, SJ (Spanish: Pedro Claver y Corber; Catalan: Pere Claver i Corber; 26 June 1580 - 8 September 1654) was a Spanish Jesuit priest and missionary born in Verd (Catalonia, Spain) who, due to his life and work, became the patron saint of slaves, the Republic of Colombia, and ministry to African Americans.. During the 40 years of his ministry in the New Kingdom of Granada, it . Nor would he give them back until their owners promised, after confession, to make alms to the leper hospital. The ship would then be loaded up with the extracted gold and silver and other new-world products destined for Spain. He became a bishop and instituted a feast in honor of Our Ladys Immaculate Conception., He was the forty-eighth Pope. The Africans and Indians arranged for a Mass of their own to which the Spanish authorities were invited; the church was ablaze with lights, a special choir sang and an oration was delivered by the treasurer of the church of Popayan, where the diaries say of the speaker no other preacher was more diffuse on the virtues, holiness, heroism and stupendous miracles of Father Claver.. In the autumn Claver would go among the traders and seamen, who landed at Cartagena in great numbers off supply ships and well as slave ships. The gruesome list goes on and on: coarse horsehair cords tied around his toes, arms, and legs; sharp pointed crosses, strapped by more coarse rope around his chest and back; a sharp studded girdle about his lions and thighs. Others were captured at random especially able bodied males and females deemed suitable for labor and breeding. Hearing of their capture, Father Claver requested and received permission to visit the fleet and offer holy Mass for the Spanish soldiers. Was Performed at the Shrine of St. Joseph in St. Louis, MO. When we approached their quarters, we thought we were entering another Guinea. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female; For you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal 3:27-28. His Lenten sermons were so moving that, due to them hundreds of young men, ex-libertines, and widowers, sought entry into the different orders that served the spiritual and corporal needs of the city. Devil means divider. Moved by the spirit of these encouragements and a missionary fervor, Peter Claver approached his provincial superior, offering himself for the West Indies and was told that his vocation would be decided in due course --by his superiors. Claver showed them that they were loved even more than they were abused, and that divine love must not be outraged by evil ways, by cruelty and lust. So many who perish, not because they seek their own loss, but because no effort is made to save them. The other priests would then carry him to his cell where, when he revived, the saint would refresh himself with a good scourging and some mental prayer. Daring explorers had sailed west and conquered new territories for the crown. Absentee Line: (07) 3810 5950 He had a steady confidence that God would care for them and, not his least worry were the slave owners whom he did not deem beyond the mercy of God. In the forty years of Saint Peter Clavers labor, this ecclesiastical office only sentenced two men to death, and sad to say, only one of these incorrigibles died repentant; the other departed the world uttering vicious blasphemies. Leader: God, + come to my assistance. Despite all Clavers exhorting, the archdeacon would only respond by requesting the prayers of the priest, and with many signs of mutual affection the two parted company. It officially closed in. Some rights reserved. His feast is observed throughout the Americas and other places around the world on the 9th of September. The Mohammedans, however, cost the saint much more effort to win to the true religion. In the evening, the saint was torn with a violent fever that, together with the intense vehemence of his aspiring love, cast him into a motionless state, in which he lay unconscious, his face betraying in its peaceful composer the transport of love he was undergoing. Finally, before departing, he sprinkled them with perfume. Then they would learn the Our Father and the Hail Mary. Prizes were given to those who learned their prayers first. Leader: Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: All: as it was in the beginning, is now . Having baptized the dying and given his first attentions to the sick, the black-robed angel of mercy gathered all the slaves together and begun to speak to them of God. Then he would go unperturbed into a more remote area in order to console the more pathetic cases. Yes, Peter Claver intended to do just that, knowing as he did, that consciences speak more easily in time of sorrow than of joy. As one of Clavers biographers put it: In an age where man could become so subhuman, others were needed who were superhuman.. The LA Sheriffs department announced that OConnells death was being investigated as a homicide. Three . The slaves were disembarked, and found to be routinely chained and roped together and shut up in the yards where crowds came to watch them, idle gazers wrote Father de Sandoval, drawn by curiosity and careful not to come too close. Hundreds of men, women and children who had been for several weeks shut up without even the care given to cattle in the ships hold, were now fatigued, ill or dying, herded together in a confined space in a climate that was unwholesome from dampness and heat. That; they had been brought across the ocean to be freed from their slavery to the devil, and to learn the way to everlasting happiness. Europeans and their ways, even their religion, met with suspicion and, in instances, outright hostility among some of the natives of the New World. Often the English and French seawolves would prey on the Granadan coastline, firing cannon balls and wielding swords, looking for an opportune time to land and loot the city. This last mentioned convict was executed by strangulation. There are ideologic forces there seemingly unredeemable by the Gospel. Your sufferings are great, echoed the black-robed preacher, but not as great as you deserve. You are better off being a slave in America than a chief in Africa, he told them. The priests carried Father Claver in his coffin from the Jesuit house to their main church. There were others who could solve the problem of slavery; Claver was concerned about the slaves. He was an early Pioneer for Human Rites and showed. He encouraged those masters who were good Catholics to look after the spiritual as well as the bodily well-being of the Negroes. An angel of mercy to the sick, Father Claver was also a seraph of consolation to prisoners. Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644), while Claver was a young man, had issued a papal decree prohibiting slavery, nevertheless, slavery continued in the business of the New World. It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. The entire city came out to pay him their respects. It seemed that the blacks under Father Claver were destined to keep the straight and narrow. Into this fire we tossed aromatics. His religious profession was written with his own hand and signed thus, Peter Claver, slave of the slaves, forever. That forever meant thirty more years of a grueling monotony, the accomplishments of which would have sufficed to fulfill the lives of ten apostles. Health In fact, he was the first Jesuit ordained in Cartagena. Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! However, witnesses testified that, despite the filth, the miraculous fabric always smelled fresh and clean. The fact that Father Claver was able to open the kingdom of heaven to over three hundred thousand Negroes was due in no small degree to the help of his African co-workers. Carry me safely to my destined place, like you carried Christ in your close embrace. A Sister of St. Peter Claver. Truer to his own biography, what might we learn from Claver . . 36 St Peter Claver by Shining Light Dolls on desktop and mobile. When a language was unuasually remote, Father Peter would have to speak through a chain of five or six interpreters to get across his message. When there was time and opportunity he took the same trouble to teach them how properly to use the sacrament of penance and in one year is said to have heard the confessions of more than five thousand. One poor prisoner, won to God by Father Claver, penned these pathetic words in his prayer book after receiving the death sentence: This book belongs to the happiest man in the world. So ugly was the business that eventually Englands conscience was so bothered by it that Great Britain abolished the slave trade in 1815 while America continued it for another fifty years, till Emancipation of the slaves by its 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. Until death, he was politely told. Like an angel of mercy, the black-robed friar would arrive at the colony with the gifts that he had begged in the market place: oranges, bananas, preserves, sweet cakes, and soothing medicines. Even Mohammedans thought him fascinating, and many found it difficult to resist his entreaties for very long. The good governor also told the fathers that the city was going to defray the cost of the obsequies by which the people of Cartagena planned to honor their most distinguished citizen. Because, he continued, your sufferings have opened for you the gates of Paradise. He turned their inevitable suffering into a cause for joy. Another saint whom he had known at school in Majorca, Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, revealed his road in life to him. Large numbers of the sick were lying on the wet ground or rather in puddles of mud. He informed his father of his intention to join the Society. The priest watched as the saint caressed the ulcerous patient like a mother, and then put his lips to the most pestiferous of his sores. When he is evilly spoken of, he is dumb. He also exercised an apostolate among the traders, the sailors and others whom he found in this hospital, Claver also brought about the conversion of an Anglican dignitary, represented to be an archdeacon of London, whom he met when visiting prisoners-of-war on a ship in the harbor. The Gospel of this first Sunday of Lent presents to us Jesus in the desert, tempted by the devil (cf. I love thee much. The beauty of the world; that thus I may with joy and courtesy go on my way. Never had any of them been loved as this man had loved them. However, the consideration of the problem of his wife and family, who would resent the temporal loss that would go with his renouncing of the Church of England, prevented the weak man from doing his duty to God right away, though he did promise to do so before he died. The Catholic Church venerates St. Peter Claver as the patron saint of African Americans and slaves, but Claver himself was neither. It was now 1654. PO Box 6016. St. Peter Claver. Claver enlisted bands of assistants, cajoling these people whether by money, goods or services, and as soon as a slave ship entered the port Claver dropped everything and went to wait on its living freight. WATCH Actor Mark Wahlberg's Inspirational Today Show Interview on Ash Wednesday Shows the Importance of Lent and Fasting! St. Peter Claver became the faithful servant of slaves. Slavery evolved into legalized discrimination and segregation in the so-called democratic experiment. And then, worse than the slave owners, were the slave traders themselves, hardened speculators in human flesh, who mercilessly hunted down their merchandise, like animals, along the equatorial African coasts and islands that they might auction them off at a handsome profit across the sea. Peter Claver was born in 1581 to a devout farming family in the Catalonia region of Spain. There they stood looking at a man they knew so well, whose holiness, ecstasies, and extraordinary virtues had so inspired them, and yet perhaps not a few accused themselves of not having profited enough by his presence among them. He refused to be satisfied with a sloppy performance; each slave had to do it perfectly. Many of the narratives both of the heroism and extraordinary wonders worked by Peter Claver concern his nursing of sick and diseased slaves, in circumstances often no one else, black or white, could face. Enter your email address to receive notifications by email every time we post something to the site. The Church has always had a difficult time influencing the worlds of business and commerce. As for his meals, even these meager refreshments were half devoured by the ungrateful wretch before the saint ever received them. He was said to have the gift of prophecy as well as the ability to read souls. The science of the school of Peter Claver was the art of dealing with pain, and of knowing its worth. It was necessary for him to taste the abandonment of the cross. The first Mass at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church took place in October 1920. Immediately he set out to help them, taking with him a free Negress named Magdalena, who used to collect alms in the city for the saint to distribute. Fr. He would also use pictures in his teaching, primarily images of the crucified Christ. One day, after offering a funeral Mass for one of these converts, he decided to visit the obstinate patient. Finally, after a third petition, approval was granted. Their work resulted in a unique tunnel system that is well over 80 km . Suddenly the bearded padre would appear like an avenging angel, whip in hand (the same one he applied unmercifully to himself), and he descended on the wicked party with wrath, terrifying the guilty, and carrying off the devils spoils- i.e., drums or other instruments. For two months, these blacks had been chained and shackled below deck in a floating hell, the men in one compartment, the women in another. Meanwhile young Clavers desire was growing more and more forceful within him to go to the Indies where God was calling him. Answered Prayers The magnificent Main Altar is the result of a pledge made by grateful parishioners who made a promise to St. Joseph. He became the prophet and miracle worker of New Granada, the oracle of Cartagena, and all were convinced that often God would not have spared the city save for him. In college, Claver met Alphonsus Rodriguez who was a porter at the college and that meeting was to set the direction of Peter Clavers life thereafter. In a short while, when these poor creatures were fattened up a little and washed, they would be auctioned off in the market place and sometimes end up far away. The rumor of his approaching death spread around the city like wildfire, everyone suddenly remembered the saintly priest again, and numbers came to kiss his hands before it was too late; his room was stripped of everything that could be carried off as relics. Scarcely can there be found in the annals of hagiography a story of a saint more honored in his demise. ". Claver would say frequently: We must speak to them with our hands before we try to speak to them with our lips. When he came upon any who were dying he baptized them and then sought out all babies born on the voyage that he might baptize them. St. Peter Claver was canonized in 1888 by Leo XIII, along with Alphonsus Rodriguez. Soon it was clear- no cause for alarm- it was only a slave ship. Kind and patient to all, for some of his penitents he prescribed the remedy of hairshirts and scourges. Though the Inquisition had also been in operation since 1610 in Cartagena, that office dealt in the main with crimes against religion, such as blasphemy, witchcraft (and their was and still is plenty of it in the West Indies), and the preaching of heresy. The Mass was part of a nationwide Day of Fasting and Prayer called for by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to acknowledge the sin of racism and to seek racial justice and healing. ); but the claim that he was its bishop is an anachronism. If it were not for this work I should be a nuisance to myself and to everybody else. Answering his critics why he did not take certain precautions moving among sick people, Claver remarked: If being a saint consists in having no taste and having a strong stomach, I admit that I may be one.. In 1610, he landed at Cartagena (modern Colombia), the principle slave market of the New World, where a thousand slaves were landed every month. When he was only thirteen, his mother Ana died, and within the same month his twenty-year-old brother followed her to the grave. A rich merchant once called him to his house to give the sacraments to a dying Negro who was one mass of ulcers. In all he had eighteen. It would be a tangent too labor-some for the continuity of this article to demonstrate at any length how forcefully and wisely the Catholic Church has handled the slavery problem throughout its history. St. Peter Claver. Our patron, Peter Claver was a Spaniard, from Spain. There were some whose diseases were so repulsive that no one but Father Claver had the supernatural guts to nurse them. Brother Alonso, as the Spaniards called him, not only held the key to the college, but he also had the key to Peter Clavers heart. Nothing in Clavers scholastic training, outside of a sincere heart, prepared him for what he would meet on the docks, in the holes of ships and in the slave markets. In the past, when he came home from such missions, he was usually so reduced physically that he looked like a walking skeleton. One day he happened to strike his breast against an angular piece of iron. For here dwelt the living dead- the very pit of human misery. This extreme wealth passing in and out of the port was what attracted the avaricious entrepreneurs to settle there. Into these yards Peter Claver plunged with medicines and food, bread, brandy, lemons, tobacco to distribute among them, some of whom were too frightened, others too ill to accept them. Cartagena needed a saint. The son of a Catalonian farmer, was born at Verdu, in 1581; he died on the 8th of September, 1654. The St. Peter Claver Place Apartments project will receive a $4 million rebate of the taxes generated by the project in yearly installments at a rate of 95% until the $4 million rebate is satisfied. All God wanted was their love in return. We have always wondered about these individuals precisely because race prejudice and discrimination have appeared so endemic to the white race. 10 Old Ipswich Road. These blacks had come from a depraved, idolatrous, and cruel civilization. Nor could he appreciate any human consolation now, as his soul had already begun to break the web that so finely separated him from the vision of his Desire. Father Claver applied himself for seven long years to the slave apostolate before he took his final vows in the Society. They thought that their blood was going to be used to dye the ships sails, and that their fat to grease her keel. For this poor sinner all Claver could do was to pray, for words were useless. Brother Rodriguez was an old man when he first laid eyes on the new student from Barcelona, but holiness knows no age; it matures and grows, but it is still the Presence of God in a soul. In 1602 he entered the Society of Jesus. Take a virtual tour to learn the history of this beautiful church. Here he had more opportunities, even than in the slave pens, to satisfy has craving to love the unlovable. And, in their simplicity, they would laugh and hug those whom they found to have the same new name as they, repeating it over and over again like children. Book a Tour Virtual Tour Ways to Give Online Donations A child could understand it, and these blacks were like children. St. Peter Claver (1580-1654), whose memorial we celebrate today, offers a timely witness as our nation reckons anew with the enduring scourge of racism. In all things he tried to imitate our holy Brother Alonso Rodriguez. A saint, a very great saint was in the formation. 2023 Knights of Peter Claver For the infirm he would come out of his stuffy box and often set them on his knees so as to accommodate them more easily, and after he was through, he would invite them all for a little breakfast. St. Peter obtained his first degrees at the University of Barcelona. According to the research of Hugh Thomas, an estimated eleven million blacks were brought to the Americas for uncompensated labor in the course of the period, 1440-1870. Africans at that time were abused because they were backward and exploitable, not because they were black. Some cases involved actual diabolic manifestations. They all had souls to save. In 1853 Ignatius Strecker had brought his family from Germany to the United States, and in 1861 he was working at St. Louis in a soap factory. Sometimes, Claver would spend almost the entire day in the great square of the city, where the four principal streets met, preaching to all who would stop to listen. No, the saint was moved by nothing less than the love for Christ whom he saw reflected in the least of his brethren. This extraordinary apostle was attracted to the beautiful things of Gods creation, like anyone else. Geography would be forever altered. John Asare-Dankwah ran the St Peter Claver church in New Orleans' historic Treme neighborhood from 2014 until early 2021, when a lawsuit alleging that he raped a boy on an out-of-state overnight trip years earlier prompted church officials to indefinitely suspend him from his role. Since I am a bad priest, God no longer desires my services. Peter Claver, the man of action, was struck with a condition of almost total paralysis. She also happened to be from Biafara and Claver needed her as a translator. 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