Saint Peter Claver

Peter Claver was born in 1580 in Verdú, Catalonia, Spain, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1602. While studying in Majorca he was encouraged by the holy Jesuit brother Alphonsus Rodríguez to go as a missionary to the Americas. He arrived in Cartagena de Indias, in present-day Colombia, in 1610, and was ordained a priest there in 1616.

Cartagena was one of the main ports of the Atlantic slave trade. For nearly forty years Claver boarded the slave ships as they arrived, bringing water, food and medicine, caring for the sick and dying, and teaching the faith through interpreters. He signed his final vows calling himself the slave of the Africans forever, and tradition credits him with baptizing hundreds of thousands. Weakened by illness in his last years, he died on September 8, 1654. Pope Leo XIII canonized him in 1888.

His remains rest in the church of San Pedro Claver in Cartagena, a place of pilgrimage. Colombia observes September 9 as its National Day of Human Rights in his honor.

In the United States, the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver, a Catholic fraternal order founded in 1909, carry on his legacy in Black Catholic communities.