| ST. PETER CLAVER, CONFESSOR B. 1580 D. 1654 |
| Feast: September 9
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| Born in
Spain, the son of a farmer, Peter Claver entered the Society of Jesus and was
ordained in 1615 in Cartagena, South America, where he had made his higher
studies. Cartagena was the center of the infamous slave trade, where many
thousands of African slaves were landed after crossing the ocean amid inhuman
conditions, and then penned like animals in yards. Their terrible plight,
corporal and spiritual, tore at the heart of the young Jesuit and he determined
to devote himself to the alleviation of their misery. At his profession he had
vowed "to be a slave of the slaves forever," and he now began to carry
out this vow. Though his main concern was the salvation of the slaves, he
realized that their bodily misery needed attention first. "We must speak to
them with our hands," he said, "before we can speak to them with our
lips." His love and his endurance seemed boundless. Taking only a minimum
of sleep, he ministered tirelessly to the slaves, washing and tending their
wounds, feeding them with food begged in the city, burying their dead,
comforting them so lovingly that he appeared like an angel from heaven. He saw
in them not only Christ's brothers and sisters, but souls for whom He had bled
and died. He instructed the adults by means of interpreters and pictures, and
during the forty years of his heroic apostolic labors he is said to have
baptized over 300,000, including infants. He fought courageously for enforcement
of the law providing for the Christian marriage of the slaves and forbidding the
separation of families. Every spring he conducted missions for the slaves in the
country, and in fall for the sailors and traders in the city, preaching in the
streets' hearing confessions for hours on end, so that he also became the
apostle of Cartagena itself. The plague struck the city in 1650, and Peter was
one of its first victims. For four years he was bedridden in his cell, unable to
work, and almost forgotten. However, when he announced his approaching end,
crowds came to kiss his hands and feet and to take away from his cell whatever
they could as relics. He was given a public burial, and the fame of his heroism,
his holiness, and his miracles soon spread throughout the world. Leo XIII
declared him the patron of all missionary work among the Negroes.
Taken from "A Saint A Day" by Berchman's Bittle, O.F.M. Cap. published by The Bruce Publishing Company, (c) 1958. |
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