St. Peter Claver

A Catalan Jesuit who professed himself "slave of the slaves of Africa" and spent forty years at the port of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia, where the Spanish slave ships landed. He met every ship as it docked, climbed into the holds with food, water, and medicine, and personally baptized — by his own count — over 300,000 enslaved Africans, learning enough of their languages to teach them.

Born in 1581 in Verdú, Catalonia, Peter was guided toward the missions by the aged Jesuit lay brother St. Alphonsus Rodríguez, who told him God had destined him for the Indies. Arriving in Cartagena in 1610, he apprenticed under Father Alfonso de Sandoval, who had pioneered ministry to the enslaved, and upon ordination vowed himself irrevocably to their service.

For decades he also visited hospitals, prisons, and plague houses, and preached in the public squares. In his final years he was bedridden and largely forgotten, tended only by a young man who treated him with contempt. He died on September 8, 1654, and the city that had ignored him in life thronged to venerate his body in death.