Many ideologues and politicians continue to believe that for the good of humanity, society must be shaped exclusively by natural means, without any intervention of supernatural faith. The life of Saint Peter Claver refutes this belief.

The life of this Spanish Jesuit is summed up by the signature of his religious profession: “Peter, slave of the Black slaves forever.” He was a soft carpet for the Black slaves to walk on. He always served them heroically, with superhuman selflessness.

He was born in 1580. He was assigned to Cartagena de Indias in 1610, where he died on September 8, 1654. There, thousands of black slaves captured in Africa were disembarked. They were treated like beasts, without any humanity. They were not recognized any rights, not even the right to life. Utter misery! This was the situation he encountered!

Unable to prevent it, he did what he could: showing great charity to the black slaves. As soon as they disembarked, he went to find them. He brought them food, drinks, sweets, etc. He caressed their wounds, caused by hatred. He relieved their physical and moral suffering. He calmed their terrors. He gave hope to the drowned. He consoled the sad. He treated them with great humanity; with the affectionate closeness of a father and the tenderness of a mother. After disembarking, they were taken to warehouses, where they remained crammed into inhumane conditions. There, he visited and comforted them. In these lands, he did more than anyone else for the black slaves. In a word, in that sea of ​​evils, he was their good angel.

He also had great zeal for the salvation of their souls. He baptized more than 300,000 black people. His zeal was not limited to this; all misery had a place in his heart: lepers, plague victims, prisoners, sinners, etc. During one Lent, he confessed 5,000 penitents.

Religion, then, transformed the hand of Peter Claver into the caressing hand of Christ. Saint John Paul II taught: Saint Peter Claver shines with special clarity in the firmament of charity of all time. In turn, for the prestigious historian Ludwig Hertling, Peter Claver is “one of the great heroes of Christian charity, along with Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Joseph Benedict Cottolengo, and Damian de Veuster.” Pope Leo XIII affirmed that, after Christ’s, his life is the one that has most impressed him.

Those ideologies that claim that their project is to do good to men and that to achieve this, faith must be excluded from the configuration of society, find, in fact, that this saint has done for others much more than what those ideologies believed possible, he has done something that exceeds their forces, he has done too much, he has made the impossible real. Here is something that they see that is undoubtedly a very great fact, while at the same time it is completely incomprehensible to them from the perspective of the logic of their ideology!

On the supernatural level, the explanation for such a great event is obvious. He drew strength from his profound union with God: prayer… Grace elevated his understanding, his heart, his entire person. True religion divinizes, elevates to the highest, supreme heights. Or, more briefly, just as a giant reaches higher than a pygmy, Christ does more than ideologies. This is the mighty lion’s roar of Saint Peter Claver!