St. Peter Claver is known for tirelessly caring for victims of the slave trade.

He was born 1581 in Catalonia, Spain, and was a bright student. After graduating from university with honors, he followed a call to the priesthood, entered the Jesuit order, and was sent to care for people in the New World. He landed in Cartagena, Colombia, and was ordained a priest there in 1615.

When he arrived, the slave trade had been established for nearly 100 years; Cartagena was a port that received many slaves captured from Congo and Angola. The conditions under which slaves were transported to the New World were horrific—a third died on the voyage. In spite of all this, some 10,000 slaves entered the Americas through Cartagena every year.

Peter Claver attached himself to work with a priest who was caring for the physical and spiritual needs of those enslaved. Though Peter was shy and introverted, he was methodical and organized and he gathered people to help him meet slave ships when they arrived in port.

When the enslaved disembarked, they were herded into a confined space for sorting. They had spent weeks locked in the ship’s hold and suffered greatly from inhuman treatment and the easy spread of illness. Peter and his band of helpers would carry medicine, food, bread, lemons, tobacco, and anything else they could get their hands on to be of aid.

“We must speak to them with our hands, before we try to speak to them with our lips,” Peter Claver said. He called himself the “slave of the slaves forever.”

He found interpreters who knew different African native languages and dialects and taught the enslaved about the Christian faith and the love of God. He tried to restore in them a sense of their human dignity, even though they had been degraded by their captors. He visited plantations to advocate for better conditions and even worked for the conversion of the slave owners. He served some 300,000 slaves in 40 years of service.

Peter Claver also would visit hospitals in Cartagena to care for the sick and poor there, and paid special attention to the imprisoned. It is said that no one faced the death penalty in Cartagena without Peter Claver present to give him consolation.

He was a sought-after confessor and would sometimes spend 15 hours a day hearing confessions. He would travel through the countryside to preach missions at parishes but would make a point of staying in the slaves’ quarters, not in the comfortable plantation homes. He preached in town squares, and his words were accompanied by the gifts of miracles and prophecy.

In 1650 he fell ill with a plague that was ravaging the region. He barely survived and spent the last few years of his life in pain. Trembling shook his body so much that he often could not even celebrate Mass. He was confined to his room and was often neglected or forgotten in the confusion of the crisis of the epidemic.

He died on this date in 1654, and his relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica. His image is used here with permission from Catholic.org, and the image of liberated chains stands as a symbol for St. Peter Claver on the Eck Hall of Law. He is the patron saint of African-Americans and those who work for interracial justice.

St. Peter Claver, patron saint of African-Americans, you cared for slaves as they arrived from Africa—pray for us!