Finally, after a third petition, approval was granted. The major contagion was smallpox; but others. After his ordination in 1616, he dedicated himself by special vow to the service of the Negro slaves-a work that was to last for thirty-three years. 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. Oddly enough, these men whom Claver used as interpreters were his own slaves. Leader: Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: All: as it was in the beginning, is now . Slavery is not a European import to a perfectly virtuous non-European world. Weeks would go by, before this floating mortuary would relinquish its infectious corpses to the ocean. 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. Through his prayer help us to see the true dignity of the human family, all children of one father and to spend ourselves for their salvation. He would never let it go beyond a half-hour because he felt that a lengthy Mass in the tropical heat would stifle devotion rather than kindle it. An angel of mercy to the sick, Father Claver was also a seraph of consolation to prisoners. By this time the slave trade had been established in the Americas for nearly a hundred years and the port of Cartagena was one of its principal centers, being conveniently situated as a clearing house for auctions and sales. It would be a tangent too labor-some for the continuity of this article to demonstrate at any length how forcefully and wisely the Catholic Church has handled the slavery problem throughout its history. He stayed there in his confessional until midday. There never was slavery more inhuman, more murderous and more complete over the souls as well as the bodies of its victims than what we have seen in our century in those countries swallowed up by the Communists. Enslaved people were brought over from Africa to work the sugar fields. No, the saint was moved by nothing less than the love for Christ whom he saw reflected in the least of his brethren. This extraordinary apostle was attracted to the beautiful things of Gods creation, like anyone else. The Africans, themselves, profited by the use of slave labor; the Mohammedans made a religion of it; the Egyptian built their civilization by it; the Greek philosophers were left free to leisurely contemplate reality on account of it; the Romans conquered and disciplined the world through it; the Chinese built walls to keep out foreigners by it; Germans goose-stepped to it; the Hebrews of the Old Testament, though they had laws protecting slaves, profited by it; and the One-Worlders of our day would like to revive it, as they have been attempting to do on a world scale by their monetary power. Once, when commended for his apostolic zeal, he replied, It ought to be so but there is nothing but self indulgence in it; it is the result of my enthusiastic and impetuous temperament. Scarcely can there be found in the annals of hagiography a story of a saint more honored in his demise. The Superior of the college arranged for the two of them to spend fifteen minutes a day conversing about spiritual things. Cursed be the law of the false prophet Mahomet, as well as all those who follow it. And on and on the stories go. In the past, when he came home from such missions, he was usually so reduced physically that he looked like a walking skeleton. They saw and they believed. 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. X-rays later revealed no . With its ideal natural harbor, Cartagena became a stopping point for ships, or galleons, as they were called, on their way to and from the homeland. Claver took to the country missions in the spring. Because it is an excellent building material, miners started excavating the mountain some 1,000 years ago. 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. They turned their eyes to Africa to find that labor force. Mt 4:1-11). They were sinners in need of repentance and divine mercy. Many of the narratives both of the heroism and extraordinary wonders worked by Peter Claver concern his nursing of sick and diseased slaves, in circumstances often no one else, black or white, could face. The devil always wants to create division, and it is what he sets out to do by tempting Jesus. In a second, a priest opened it. Pius II (whose Patron was a slave) did so in 1462, calling slavery a great crime. Urban VIII (1539) strongly opposed it. Across the sea a ship arose on the horizon. It is estimated that in forty years Peter Claver instructed and baptized over 300,000 slaves. New lands to the west crossing the Atlantic Ocean had been discovered two hundred years previous. And the saint prayed hard. Geography would be forever altered. He drew them by his humility and his Christlikeness. to peoples judged, by the impoverished social consciousness of that time, substandard in their origin, purpose and development. 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. Hence, the nefarious exploitation and commerce of slavery, for there was no industry to speak of, only raw human labor for which the royals and their cohorts deemed themselves unworthy. Clavers problem was that he was sensitive. 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. In addition to celebrating the Eucharist, our various ministries include Black Catholic Concerns, Women's Fellowship in English and . 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. The doctors recognized such a miracle and it was later authenticated by the Vatican in 1887, leading to Peter Claver's canonization in 1888. In 1853, Ignatius Strecker, a native of Germany, arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, with his wife and nine children. "No, no. The driver of the vehicle and a teacher were also killed in the incident around 3 pm. His Mass, which followed, was deliberately short. Jn 17:11). It was now 1654. These were bought in West Africa for four crowns a head, or bartered for goods and sold in America for an average two hundred crowns-a-piece. Matters for him were complicated by an outbreak of an epidemic in the area which claimed as one of its first victims, Father Claver himself. Strangely enough, when the man saw the saint he called out to him, Oh my Father! Author and Publisher - Catholic Online The truck loaded with cement crossed the otherside of the divider after losing control and hit th, POPE FRANCIS ANGELUS Saint Peter's Square Sunday, 26 February 2023 ______________________________________ Dear brothers and sisters, buongiorno! The saint spent every day in the confessional from sunrise until twelve noon. Take a tour of the Shrine of St. Joseph in St. Louis.Learn More, Receive the sacrament of marriage at St. Joseph.Learn More, See opening hours and get directions.Learn More, 2023 Shrine of St. Joseph | 1220 North 11th Street, St. Louis, Missouri 63106 | info@shrineofstjoseph.org | (314) 231-9407. Outside the harbor in the Bay of Cartagena, the Spaniards were at one time holding on ships some six hundred English and Dutch Privateers whom they had captured on one of their Granadan island colonies which suffered a temporary takeover at the pirates hands. Pope Leo XIII sent a golden coffin for his remains along with a pipe organ which sits in the choir loft of the Church to this day. 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. His king was Philip II, and his spiritual Father in Rome was Pope Sixtus V. Misfortune hit him hard and early. Moved by the spirit of these encouragements and a missionary fervor, Peter Claver approached his provincial superior, offering himself for the West Indies and was told that his vocation would be decided in due course --by his superiors. They thought that their blood was going to be used to dye the ships sails, and that their fat to grease her keel. Showing them Christ fastened to the cross, as he is depicted on the baptismal font on which streams of blood flow down from his wounds, we led them in reciting an act of contrition in their own language. 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.. Today, we are a trilingual community with Masses in English, Spanish and French/Creole. While he preached, he suffered. St Peter Claver Prison Ministry is a faith-based mentorship program empowering the incarcerated, ex-offenders and their families obtain self-sufficiency and reduce recidivism. In every possible was he tried to help them, whether by procuring them good lawyers, or even by speaking to judges, in order to win them lighter sentences. 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.. Much as he loved to visit the hospital of Saint Sebastian, the leprosarium of Saint Lazarus occupied the tenderest place in Clavers magnanimous heart. Spain brought a cease to trafficking in slaves in 1850. Guest: Sister Maria Philomena, M.I.C.M. Large numbers of the sick were lying on the wet ground or rather in puddles of mud. Saint of the Day for Wednesday, March 1st, 2023, First Station: Jesus is condemned to death, 5 prayers you should say this Lenten Season News. And then, worse than the slave owners, were the slave traders themselves, hardened speculators in human flesh, who mercilessly hunted down their merchandise, like animals, along the equatorial African coasts and islands that they might auction them off at a handsome profit across the sea. An institution, true- old as man himself- but, nevertheless, debasingly artificial and oftentimes cruel. 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. How many souls in America might be sent to heaven by priests who are idle in Europe?. Only some fifty years before, another Jesuit, Francis Xavier, had set out on a similar mission to the East. These heroic acts of sublime love for his neighbor were by no means natural to Claver. In this prison there were detained slaves, who re-lived the dark pagan rituals in the hot forest nights, side by side with certain clerics who would not keep their vow of chastity. But he found time to care for other sufferers besides slaves. We ask this through Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. He was unable to take a step. At the age of twenty he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Tarragona. For two days the people marched past the sacred remains with great solemnity and emotion, kissing his hands and feet; first the nobles, and finally the Negroes. 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. Amen Protect Your Family Resources News VIDEO NOW AVAILABLE: Dismantling Systemic Racism in America February 27, 2023 Claver would never recover from this illness. He was born in 1580 into a prosperous farming family in the Spanish village of Verdu, Catalua. How many more miracles have taken place in connection with this church over the past 150 years, no one knows. To me it is a miracle ! Claver went to the door of the room in which the man was quarantined. Three solemn funeral Masses were sung, one of which was under the auspices of the Negroes themselves and their choir; while three orators from different orders tried to outdo one another in extolling the virtues of the man who had so inflamed the city. With his familiar face no longer visible in the market and byways, people soon began to forget about the man they had so short a time ago nearly worshiped. Claver felt as if the Holy Ghost had descended on them as He had at Pentecost. He felt he could never advise another to bear a cross that he himself wasnt already bearing. Her body began to move. 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. The soil of Clavers soul was fertile and moist. The priests carried Father Claver in his coffin from the Jesuit house to their main church. Come to me, my Father! Claver, like the Good Shepherd, ran to embrace him, and, for a time, tears choked any words either tried to utter. A number of other Englishmen followed his example. City magistrates ordered that he should be buried at public expense and with great pomp. We asked them to make an act of contrition and to manifest their detestation of their sins. At three oclock in the morning he entered the church. In 1610, he landed at Cartagena (modern Colombia), the principle slave market of the New World, where a thousand slaves were landed every month. At that moment. 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. Why? His order had already achieved amazing success in its missions, its schools, and in its ability to produce saints. The startled priest, having been told the identity of the man kneeling before him, immediately lifted Father Claver up and dropping to his knees he likewise kissed the reverend feet of his predecessor with great emotion and confusion. In the afternoon hours he would hear only the confessions of the Negresses, and then, in the evening, beginning at six oclock, he would devote himself strictly to the men. Bot the saint knew it not. 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