Society of Jesus Celebrates Feast of St. Peter Claver, SJ
September 9 is the feast day of Saint Peter Claver, a Jesuit missionary known as the patron saint of slaves, African missions and interracial justice. St. Claver spent his life serving enslaved Africans who were brought to Colombia during the 17th century.
Born on June 26, , in Catalonia, Spain, St. Claver studied at the University of Barcelona and joined the Jesuits at age 20 in While studying philosophy at Majorca in , St. Claver developed a friendship with Jesuit Brother Alphonsus Rodriguez. Br. Rodriguez, who spent his days doing menial work as a doorkeeper, encouraged St. Claver to become a missionary in the Spanish colonies in America.
In , St. Claver voyaged from Spain to Cartagena, Colombia, where, after five years of further study, he was ordained a priest. Despite Pope Paul III’s repeated condemnations of slavery during the previous century, European colonists continued capturing and enslaving Africans to work on plantations and in mines. The Society of Jesus itself enslaved persons in the Americas for centuries, including in Cartagena in St. Peter Claver’s day. It is important not to overlook this deeply reg
St. Peter Claver
St. Peter Claver was born at Verdu, Catalonia, Spain, in , of impoverished parents descended from ancient and distinguished families. He studied at the Jesuit college of Barcelona, entered the Jesuit novitiate at Tarragona in and took his final vows on August 8th, 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."
In , he landed at Cartagena (modern Colombia), the principle slave market of the New World, where a thousand slaves were landed every month. After his ordination in , he dedicated himself by special vow to the service of the Negro slaves-a work that was to last for thirty-three years. He labored unceasingly for the salvation of the African slaves and the abolition of the Negro slave trade, and the love he lavished on them was something that transcended the natural order.
Boarding the slave ships as they entered the harbor, he would hurry to the revolting inferno of the hold, and offer whatever poor refreshments he could afford; he would care for the sick and dying, and instruct the slaves through Negro catechists before administeri
How is it possible for someone to condone the enslavement of other human beings? How could anyone justify or tolerate slavery?
While twenty-first century Westerners may find it unthinkable, many cultures throughout history have accepted slavery—that is, the practice of a person being owned by someone else and forced to work for that person—as an institution.
What else could an army in the ancient world do with the soldiers they had defeated? Enslaving them was more profitable than executing them and less dangerous than letting them go free. In cultures without bankruptcy laws, selling oneself or one’s children into slavery was often the only way to pay off debts. Tribes from Africa and the Americas sometimes kidnapped and enslaved members of other tribes to demonstrate their superior strength. Many cultures have also permitted slavery for a much more practical reason: profit.
Racial slavery in North America, for example, arose out of the colonists’ desire to make themselves more profitable to the British Crown. Some of the labor-intensive crops planted in the New World required a lot of cheap labor, and the cheaper the better. By the time of the Civil War, Southern states
St. Peter Claver: Slave of the Slaves Forever
by Joseph F. X. Sladky
Description
Like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Claver was not a high-profile social reformer, but a saint who worked to alleviate the physical and spiritual misery of individual slaves on a one-to-one basis, giving them a sense of their own personal dignity, providing them with patient Christian instruction, and instilling in them a true hope in their eternal salvation.
Larger Work
Crisis Magazine Online
Publisher & Date
Sophia Institute, September 8,
Odd as it may seem, that great “Defender of the Indians,” Bartolomé de Las Casas, did not originally see the injustice of Negro slavery. To be fair, he bitterly regretted his position later, and he soundly denounced the African slave trade once he was better informed. Even so, early on, he was a vocal and influential proponent of importing black slaves from Africa to shoulder the labor burdens which the Indians were not constitutionally fit to undertake. In no small part, this contributed to the growth of the black slave traffic from Africa, which increased prodigiously during the years of the sixteenth century. Cartagena de Indias was one of two
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