The resident Jesuits, despite the utter poverty of their quarters, gave their newly arrived brothers a hearty welcome, and immediately afterwards Claver was summoned up the Magdalena River to the capital city of Santa Fe de Bogota to finish his theology. Let us see, then, from whom he wants to divide him, and how he tempts him. Pleased by the courtesy of the Catholic priest, the archdeacon asked him in Latin for a private interview. Asare-Dankwah, 62, has denied the rape accusation. But it would be inaccurate to label Father Claver as some kind of humanitarian. When sailors sailed into town the vices and disorder of the port and other disturbances increased. As his faithful friend and companion, Brother Nicholas, helped him into a bed, the saint moaned, This sickness is the reward for my sins. The problem with many of the Moslems was that they were slaves, and consequently, they despised Christianity because it was the religion of their captors. His bedroom and the room where he died are also preserved to this day in the same place. The son of a Catalonian farmer, was born at Verdu, in 1581; he died on the 8th of September, 1654. The major contagion was smallpox; but others. These marks of distinction were a legitimate incentive to the others to embrace their benefactors religion, which oddly enough was also the religion of their oppressors.With the sick, Father Claver had no care for precautionary measures of hygiene for himself. Claver made use of pictures, in accordance with standard catechetical pedagogy of the time, showing our Lord suffering on the cross for them; above all did he try to instill in them some degree of self respect, to give them at least some idea that as redeemed human beings they had dignity and worth, even if as slaves they were outcast and despised. That is why Saint Peter Claver traveled such a lonely road. So horrible was the scene and revolting the conditions that a friend who came with Father Claver once could never face it again, and of Father de Sandoval himself it was written in one of the diary entries of his Jesuit province that, when he (Clavers friend) heard a vessel of Negroes was come into port he was at once covered with a cold sweat and death-like pallor at the recollection of the indescribable fatigue and unspeakable work on the previous like occasions. So many who perish, not because they seek their own loss, but because no effort is made to save them. His austerities, which will be described later, would make even holy Job shudder. Visit the website Show place on Google Maps. He loved to entertain. He was born in 1580 in a little town of Spain called Verdu in the diocese of Solfona and he was baptized Peter. Into this fire we tossed aromatics. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. One shipload would average between five and six hundred blacks from as many as fifteen or twenty African nations or tribes. Despite Father Clavers agonizing condition, the brutal attendant, when he had to dress him for a visit to the chapel, would shove him around with no sense of delicacy, yanking the aching victim here and there in frustration, as he clumsily clothed him. To conclude the sessions he would hold aloft the crucifix and have the slaves join in together with the prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Thou art my Father. His memorial is celebrated on September 9. When he was only thirteen, his mother Ana died, and within the same month his twenty-year-old brother followed her to the grave. The slaves were disembarked, and found to be routinely chained and roped together and shut up in the yards where crowds came to watch them, idle gazers wrote Father de Sandoval, drawn by curiosity and careful not to come too close. Hundreds of men, women and children who had been for several weeks shut up without even the care given to cattle in the ships hold, were now fatigued, ill or dying, herded together in a confined space in a climate that was unwholesome from dampness and heat. He is the Patron Saint of: *Slaves, *the Republic of Columbia, *the Ministry to African Americans * and Sea-Farers. Cartagena needed a saint. Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! This, then was their couch, a very uncomfortable one not only for that reason, but especially because they were naked, without any clothing to protect them. But Claver was not deterred, not even when the ecclesiastical authorities lent too willing an ear to the complaints of his critics. He never bothered philosophizing about the evils of a system, while planting class hatred and bitterness, as the Socialists of our day do. It contains many works of art. One Turkish galley slave had resisted Clavers pleadings for over twenty years when the saint heard that a sickness had put him at deaths door. Here in the solitude of his confinement he suffered not only physically but also mentally. One priest who loved Father Claver dearly and who longed to have his charity went with him to tend a poor afflicted slave. For the infirm he would come out of his stuffy box and often set them on his knees so as to accommodate them more easily, and after he was through, he would invite them all for a little breakfast. His order had already achieved amazing success in its missions, its schools, and in its ability to produce saints. Settling the New World and stealing from that New World brought with it the necessity of cheap labor, human labor . Four years is a long time to be laid up. Claver did all he could to provide for the observance of these laws, and every spring after Easter he would make a tour of those plantations nearer Cartagena in order to see how his Africans were fairing under their masters. And if his love for her was great, her was no less for him. Pope Urban VIII (1623-1644), while Claver was a young man, had issued a papal decree prohibiting slavery, nevertheless, slavery continued in the business of the New World. In truth, it was a blessed form of servitude for those eighteen Negroes. 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. There was nothing artificial about Peter Claver. Lima in Peru had five- Saint Rose, Saint Francis Solano, Saint Martin de Porres, Saint Turibius, and Saint John Massias. All these poor creatures had, was a fire-and-brimstone Jesuit, and he wanted to save them from an eternal misery. Little is known of his early years. All of them died on the spot. Heartfelt Condolences to Fatima Sister Fr. Some rights reserved. Thousands of times, during his forty years in the world of pain, he would take off that cloak and use it. But the conclusion cannot be avoided that only the worst of the Spanish masters can be compared with, say, the English slave-owners of Jamaica in the 17th to 18th centuries, whose physical cruelty was no less than fiendish and diabolical by report. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation). Kind and patient to all, for some of his penitents he prescribed the remedy of hairshirts and scourges. One of his linguistic gems was Calepino, a veritable genius, who spoke eleven different African dialects. Interestingly enough, the vessel carrying Claver was named after his patron saint, the Prince of Apostles, San Pedro. Saint Paul, who never actually condemned slavery as such, nevertheless elevated the slave as equal in Gods eyes to the free, thereby inflicting slavery with a mortal wound. One Dutchman was particularly hard, and assaulted Father Claver verbally every time he saw him, shouting in his fury that the priest would never bewitch him as he did the others. Though it was Gods will for our saint to be forgotten before he left this life, it was also His will that in death His humble servant be exalted. The final emergence was on behalf of the lepers at Saint Lazarus. The devil always wants to create division, and it is what he sets out to do by tempting Jesus. The girls' school, called the St. Joseph's School For Girls (or the Spanish Indian Residential School for Girls), relocated to a 400-acre piece of land next to the St. Peter Claver School in Spanish, Ontario, in 1913; construction of St. Joseph's would not be completed until the following year, however.. There were some whose diseases were so repulsive that no one but Father Claver had the supernatural guts to nurse them. It was this very notebook the dying apostle clasped to his breast on his deathbed, only releasing it for the benefit of novices at the Jesuit Novitiate in Tunga in the mountains of Colombia. Today one can visit the room and window from which Father Claver peered out to be ready once ships arrived with captured and bartered blacks. I entreat of those who read it, He said as he lay dying, to pray to God for a sinner, who having such a precious mine at his disposal, instead of drawing from it the pure gold of sanctity, has collected nothing but rust.. They saw and they believed. During the time that the blacks spent in the sheds, they were penned so closely that they had to sleep almost upon one another and, thereby, freely handed on their diseases nonetheless, Claver was seen caring for the bodies of the sick and the souls of all. In Claver, however, was found a representation of the other side of the Spanish conscience, namely, an abiding affection for humanity especially Gods dark children whom he heard early on were ill-treated with this despicable trade. 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. To Claver, the poorest of the poor were truly the least of His brethren and heirs to a kingdom not of this world. Then there were the black agents who, under the pay of whites, scoured the coasts with products to sell, often unsheathing concealed weapons in order to take the unsuspecting victims into captivity by force. He announced to Brother Gonzales that he would die on the next festival of the Blessed Virgin. Nor did he cease consoling them with kind words and gestures, for the Negroes all had one beautiful trait in common; they were extremely sensitive to a harsh word or a kind one. SEE ALSO: #BreakingNews California Catholic Bishop David O'Connell Shot and Killed at Age 69 - RIP to the Peacemaker Bishop - https://www.catholicnewsworld.com/2023/02/breakingnews-california-bishop-david.html Bishop OConnell, was a native of Ireland who spent most of his 43 years as a priest serving in LA. It officially closed in. One might say that Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez has at that moment planted his own soul into Saint Peter Claver. But many more, rank-and-file citizens would seek Father Claver out in the confessional where he had sometimes to spend fifteen hours at a stretch, reproving, advising, encouraging, and absolving. In addition, the man of God found time to organize a talented black choir. Upon careful interrogation, even though the whole household had assumed otherwise, the wise priest perceived that she had never been baptized. And the eighty-year-old saint of Palma instantly recognized the sanctity he saw in the twenty-five year old Peter Claver. 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