Two years later there was another miracle at the church, and then another, and another. Thousands of times, during his forty years in the world of pain, he would take off that cloak and use it. St. Peter Claver. Here in the solitude of his confinement he suffered not only physically but also mentally. A contemporary description of our saints character at that time was given by a fellow student in a letter to a superior at the latters request years later: Modest, gentle, and friendly, he edified us all, trying to please and help everyone. How beautifully did his words echo on their souls as he spoke to them of the infinite value of their cross if only they should bear it with joy and patience. He was much more than that to the Negroes. The descendant of these six hundred English and Dutch converts can be seen to this very day in their blond-haired, blue-eyed progeny whom one may see walking the streets of Cartagena. For fourteen years the man of God served one such helpless old man, visiting him three or four times a week and bringing him food and consolation, until at last he passed away in the blessed arms of his benefactor. After receiving Baptism from John in the Jordan, Jesus was called by the Father my beloved Son (Mt 3:17), and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove (cf. Claver was less successful in his efforts to make converts among the Muslims who came to Cartagena to do business, but he managed to bring a number of Moors and Turks to the faith, though one held out for thirty years before succumbing, and even then a vision of our Lady was required to convince him. (Fakhri B. Maluf, Ph.D.), RIP. He studied at the Jesuit college of Barcelona, entered the Jesuit novitiate at Tarragona in 1602 and took his final vows on August 8th, 1604. He was canonized at the same time as his friend St. Alphonsus Rodriguez in 1888 and he was declared by Pope Leo XIII patron of all missionary enterprises among blacks in whatever part of the world. Conflict sapped the strength of the European landscape and gave rise to a spirit hungering for new things, particularly, in the minds of the young. Claver couldnt remove the cross but he could make it sweet. 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. Whole parts of their bodies were eaten away by the dreadful disease; some had lost limbs, others had loose parts of their faces; some had scarcely any resemblance to a human exterior remaining, and the odor emanating from their many sores was the worst the apostle anywhere encountered. Peter Claver was seventy-one years old. I never heard him complain. They discovered a God, a gentle Savior, and a theology of history, that could help make sense of their enslavement. Masters were willingly freeing their slaves. While he preached, he suffered. The dignity of man as redeemed and one with Christ, indeed a member of His Mystical Body, tended to stigmatize the institution as unworthy of a Christian. That era of conquest was bereft of strands of a moral conscience, indeed a social ethic that would have troubled to its foundations the insidious business of the slave trade. Then they would learn the Our Father and the Hail Mary. Prizes were given to those who learned their prayers first. How many more miracles have taken place in connection with this church over the past 150 years, no one knows. There were government officials, businessmen, merchants, seamen, miners, plantation owners, engineers and middlemen whose lives profited from this nefarious trade; among them Jews and Christians of various denominational traditions who rationalized this sordid enterprise. Some cases involved actual diabolic manifestations. That entire day our young hero was unable to shake off the experience and walked about as if he were not on earth. Two orders, the Trinitarians and the Order of Mercy had this for their object. Out from these massive bulwarks of stone peered formidable artillery batteries and sentinel boxes, where watchmen scoured the horizon for an enemy sail. Wahlberg who was born in Boston, Massachusetts, is a practicing Catholic. 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. As the transplanted Africans struggled to comprehend the evil that had befallen them, their intrinsic spiritual natures discovered something unique in America they had not seen before a fully articulated ritual relationship with the Supreme Being, who was pictured in the book Christians called the Bible not just as Creator and Ruler, but also as the God of History, a God who lifted up and cast down nations and peoples. 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. Spain of the 17th century proceeded with an unscrupulous imperialism, taking to the treacherous seas to pursue conquest in land, gold, silver, jewels, spices, sugar and tobacco. 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. Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what else, we hurried toward them. Africa was literally exploding in violence. Apostolate He embraced lepers, kissed cancerous lesions, sucked out poison from running ulcers, washed the unclean and dined in their unsightly hovels, nor did he refrain even from eating food some despairing suicidals had rejected from their own mouths, in his determination to gain their confidence. As the saying goes, only love can afford to be severe. Father Peter Claver never fully recovered consciousness and died two days later on the birthday of Mary, the Mother of God, September 8, about two oclock in the morning, in the year of our Lord 1654. Falling down before him, the veteran apostle kissed his feet. Sitting on a rock, he would put his cloak over their shoulders, if it was cold, and hear their confessions. Cartagena needed a saint. They needed a voice to ease their burden, not to make it heavier with bitterness and anger. Usually, about one-third of the slaves died en route. Devil means divider. They came from villages where agriculture, farming and nature were at the center of life, where spirits dwelt in each thing around them, and where isolation was unthinkable since the self was always in relationship to others. The devil always wants to create division, and it is what he sets out to do by tempting Jesus. Too bad todays social experts werent around in the seventeenth century to help the slaves. Junior Knights and Junior Daughters of KPC, Inc. The bishop's housekeeper's husband, Carlos Medina, a 61-year-old man arrested by Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies as the prime suspect in the murder. 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. Each one had to be taken apart and drilled, time and again, even in so simple a matter as making the sign of the cross or in learning the prayer of love and repentance that each had to know: Claver taught them to pray these words: Jesus Christ, Son of God, thou shalt be my Father and my Mother and all my good. All these poor creatures had, was a fire-and-brimstone Jesuit, and he wanted to save them from an eternal misery. On September sixth, two Negroes carried Father Claver to the chapel where he received Holy Communion with the devotion of a seraph. Clasping his feet in their hands, they bade him farewell amid a profusion of sighs and tears. Peter Claver crossed the seas but once, and never quitted, for the rest of his life, the country to which obedience restricted him. Claver took to the country missions in the spring. 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. He stayed there in his confessional until midday. Civil authorities, among his harshest critics, who had looked askance at his solicitude for mere slaves and the clergy who had called his zeal indiscrete now vied with one another to honor his memory. But what made this Jesuit in Cartagena a saint was not only his detachment from the world and attachment to Christ, but along with that, an astounding ability to reduce potency to act. Once more, this time most likely to test his obedience, they denied it. Arriving at the shack where the men lay writing in the mud, the gentle doctor lifted them up one by one onto some dry mats. Many a despairing man who had been confined to bed due to the physical consequences of an irregular life would find the supernatural peace through the encouragement and charity of good Father Peter. To cover the feverish and naked, to wash wounds, to shroud women penitents and to place upon it the abandoned sick, until he could procure them a mat for a bed. 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. St. Peter Claver Peter was born of a distinguished family in Catalonia, Spain in 1581. Its a filthy voyageas well as a laborious [one]., Sir Dalby Thomascommander of the Royal Africa Company at Cape Coast, the Gold Coast, c. 1700Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870,Touchstone Books, 1997. And for two months they had heard nothing but abusive speech. I was able to track down the . Catholic Online is a Project of Your Catholic Voice Foundation, a Not-for-Profit Corporation. Some were so debased as to sell their own children for gain. Taking his beloved pupil aside, the humble teacher of saints (many great missionaries were guided by Rodriguez) spoke with authority: I cannot express to you the sorrow that I feel at seeing that God is unknown to the greater part of the world. He stayed there, except to attend to the missions nearby, like Our Lady on Calvarys hill. Claver means keeper of the keys. The holy brother of Montesion kept the keys of the college, for he served as the porter. Owing to the scarcity of priests who go to preach His name; what tears are not called for at the sight of so many people straying in the wilderness because there is no one to guide them. (Fakhri B. Maluf, Ph.D.), RIP Prior: Brother Andr Marie, M.I.C.M. While studying philosophy at Majorca, the young religious was influenced by St. Alphonsus Rodriguez to go to the Indies and save "millions of perishing souls.". St. Christo, A Catholic Priest and 3 Nuns were Killed in a Car Accident in India. Until death.. But what made this Jesuit in Cartagena a saint was not only his detachment from the world and attachment to Christ, but along with that, an astounding ability to reduce potency to act. They were sinners in need of repentance and divine mercy. They had no charitable funds at their disposal, no plaudits from well-disposed audiences; they were hampered and discouraged by the owners and often rebuffed by the slaves themselves. St. Peter Claver had seven interpreters, one of whom spoke four African dialects. But Claver was not deterred, not even when the ecclesiastical authorities lent too willing an ear to the complaints of his critics. ST. PETER CLAVER CATHOLIC CHURCH Rev. Again the gruesome routine began, washing their infections, kissing their sores, bandaging their wounds, even sweeping up their hovels. Finally, before departing, he sprinkled them with perfume. Sometimes the Mother of God herself appeared to certain of the infidels to rebuke them for not listening to Father Claver. Soon it was clear- no cause for alarm- it was only a slave ship. After this we began an elementary instruction about baptism, that is, the wonderful effects of the sacrament on body and soul. Some rights reserved. They all had souls to save. When he viewed their deplorable condition and saw the fear in their faces, he broke down and cried. The family Rosary was an essential part of the typical sixteenth century pious Catalonian rearing in which Ana and Pedro Claver, our saints parents schooled their four children. They requested that the Jesuits transfer his body to the church where the populace could see him for the last time and properly venerate his remains. THE Apostolate of St. Peter Claver is unique. Father Claver was also in particular demand to minister to condemned criminals, and it is said that no one was executed at Cartagena during Clavers lifetime without Claver being present to console the man; under Clavers influence the most hardened and defiant would spend their last hours in prayer and sorrow for their sins. Episode 361: Whether God Exists? the Five Proofs, The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Outside the Church there is no Salvation (Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus), Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire, Brother Francis, M.I.C.M. And though death should have come much sooner than it did for a man who had trodden on danger as one would on rose petals, it finally began to move on him mercilessly. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. Thou gavest life, I pray no act of mine may take away or mar that gift of Thine (continues below). Surely this man deserved some consideration, some appreciation for all he had done in Gods service. And he did win thousands of them despite all kinds of obstacles. PO Box 6016. In truth, it was a blessed form of servitude for those eighteen Negroes. Episode 364: What Is the Point of Lent? Until death, he was politely told. And when the slaves misbehaved Father Claver was always blamed. The Blessed Peter Claver was born at Verdu in Catalonia in the year 1581, of parents eminent for piety and virtue, who instilled like qualities into his infant heart from the very cradle. There they languished for two months. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike License. PETER CLAVER, PRIEST. He was received into the novitiate of Tarragona at the age of 20 and was sent to the college of Montesione at Palma in Majorca, Spain. Sometimes these sermons would last for hours, and he did not let the intense heat deter him. The man of God scourged himself three times nightly: before prayer, before retiring, and after rising. The fleet of three galleons set sail on April 10, 1610. 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. The Reformed churchmen looked on in a kind of curious awe as they watched the majesty of a ceremony they had heard so reviled. Baptism was received with such an emotion of joy as to move the hardest heart. If a baby had the misfortune to be taken with its mother, or born during the voyage, it usually died of malnutrition. It was during these scourges that the holy mans heroic charity was such a spectacle for even the angels to behold. 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. For two months, the slaves endured a fate worse than that of animals- hanging onto a life that seemed not worth the effort to preserve it- half dead, half insane, and reeking in the filth of their dysentery, vomit, and running ulcerous wounds. Saint September 9 : St. Peter Claver a Miracle Worker and the Patron of Racism, Slaves and African Americans September 08, 2022 The son of a Catalonian farmer, was born at Verdu, in 1581; he died on the 8th of September, 1654. 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. When this fact was safely determined, the Christians were separated from the pagans, and they received a Rosary and a medal to be put around their necks. The first principle in his instructions to his helpers was centered in the corporal works of mercy. The pastor of St Peter Claver in New Orleans, who has been on leave since the revelation of an abuse allegation in January, has responded with a lawsuit of his own. She stared at Claver and sighed, Jesus, Jesus how tired I am. Then, pressed by the others to relate what she has seen, she said that as she walked down a long beautiful road, a white man of great beauty stopped her and told her to return, for she could go no further. Church law forbade a master to hold a slave who wanted to become a priest. Alphonsus is accused of firing-up in Claver the idea of going to the help of unfortunates who were without spiritual ministrations in the colonies of the New World. He became a bishop and instituted a feast in honor of Our Ladys Immaculate Conception., He was the forty-eighth Pope. It was November 1615. To me it is a miracle ! He would also use pictures in his teaching, primarily images of the crucified Christ. What sort of a man must I be, that I cannot do a little good without causing so much confusion? Claver would ask. Three . Of course, more often than not he made use of much more religious means of intercession, such as relics, holy water (a sacramental that the saint never tired of sprinkling everywhere) and a rough-hewn cross of maple. He was beatified 16 July, 1850, Pius IX, and canonized 15 January, 1888, by Leo XIII. Asare-Dankwah, 62, has denied the rape accusation. Play over 320 million tracks for free on SoundCloud. His feast is celebrated on September 9. One day close to his very last, as he lay in his cell, the saint heard a great deal of rejoicing in the residence. As a dressing for the wounds of the whipping, he wore over them a soothing full-length hairshirt. But when he saw the condition of Africans in the stinking slave pens of Cartagena, Colombia, he became bold and outspoken. The soil of Clavers soul was fertile and moist. St. Peter obtained his first degrees at the University of Barcelona. In this case, the dignitary was the governor himself, Don Jeronimo Zueso Cassola, the same man who raced to tell Father Claver the good news. In all this he found more opportunity to suffer. Shortly after midnight, on the feast of Our Ladys Nativity September 8th, his face, which had the aspect of one ravished in God, suddenly took on the features of a man utterly exhausted. 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. 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