St. Peter Claver

St. Peter Claver was born in 1580 at Verdú in Catalonia, Spain, and died on 8 September 1654 at Cartagena, in modern Colombia. He joined the Society of Jesus and, encouraged by the humble porter and future saint Alphonsus Rodríguez, volunteered for the missions of the New World. He was sent to Cartagena, one of the principal ports of the transatlantic slave trade, where thousands of enslaved Africans arrived each year after a horrific ocean passage.

Binding himself by vow as 'the slave of the Africans forever,' he devoted some forty years to meeting the slave ships, descending into their holds to bring food, medicine, and comfort to the sick and dying, and then instructing and baptizing the captives — an estimated three hundred thousand souls — while defending their human dignity against cruelty. Worn out and himself neglected in his final illness, he died having spent everything for the least of his brethren. Canonized in 1888, he is honored as the patron of enslaved peoples, of African missions, and of the cause of racial justice.