Saint Peter Claver
Priest
- Feast Day
- September 9
- Life
- 1581–1654
- Canonized
- 1888
- Order
- Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
- Born
- Verdú, Catalonia, Spain
Pedro Claver y Corberó was born at Verdú in Catalonia in 1580 or 1581. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1602 and at the College of Montesión on Majorca was guided by the lay brother and porter Saint Alphonsus Rodríguez, who urged him to volunteer for the West Indies missions. He sailed for New Granada in 1610 and was ordained priest at Cartagena in 1616.
Cartagena de Indias was then the principal slave port of the Spanish colonies; thousands of enslaved Africans, having survived the Middle Passage in chains, were unloaded annually for sale. Claver took the vow Aethiopum semper servus, ever the slave of the blacks, and for thirty-eight years devoted himself to them. As soon as a ship arrived he descended into the holds with food, medicine, brandy, lemons and tobacco, washed the wounds of those still chained, and through interpreters proclaimed the Gospel to them in their own languages. He is reported to have catechized and baptized roughly 300,000 persons over the course of his ministry.
He also visited prisons and hospitals and preached missions to the planters demanding humane treatment. Stricken in his last years by a paralytic illness and largely abandoned, he died at Cartagena on the night of 7-8 September 1654. Pope Pius IX beatified him in 1850, and Pope Leo XIII canonized him together with Alphonsus Rodríguez on 15 January 1888. Leo XIII later named him patron of all Catholic missions to the African peoples.
Saint Peter Claver is venerated as the Apostle of the Slaves and patron of work for racial justice. The 9 September Memorial is observed in the United States and Latin America. His witness anticipates Catholic social teaching's insistence on the inviolable dignity of every human person, made in the image of God, regardless of race or condition.
Patronages
African missions · Colombia · interracial justice · enslaved peoples
Catholic Churches Named After Saint Peter Claver
20 parishes on Catholic Church Times share Saint Peter Claver's name. Find their Mass times, confession schedules, and adoration hours:
- St Peter Claver, Dulwich — Dulwich, SA
- St. Peter Claver — Wapato, WA
- St. Peter Claver Church — Macon, GA
- St. Peter Claver — West Hartford, CT
- St. Peter Claver Catholic Church — Detroit, MI
- St.Peter Claver Pariah — Tyler, TX
- St. Peter Claver Parish — Detroit, MI
- St. Peter Claver — Saint Inigoes, MD
- St. Peter Claver — New Orleans, LA
- Saint Peter Claver Catholic Church — New Orleans, LA
- St. Peter Claver — Huntington, WV
- Saint Peter Claver Catholic Church — Saint Inigoes, MD
- Saint Peter Claver Catholic Church — Houston, TX
- St. Peter Claver Church — Saint Paul, MN
- Saint Peter Claver Catholic Church — Baltimore, MD
- Saint Peter Claver — Simi Valley, CA
- St. Peter Claver — Tampa, FL
- St. Peter Claver — Sheboygan, WI
- St. Peter Claver — Iowa, LA
- St. Peter Claver — Saint Louis, MO
Sources