One priest, twelve ships a year, and baskets of lemons

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, September 8, 1654 AD — Twelve to fourteen slave ships came into the bay at Cartagena de Indias every year. Each one had between three hundred and six hundred people in the hold. Saint Peter Claver met them for forty-four years. He died in his room at the Jesuit college here early this morning.

He was born at Verdú, in Catalonia. He landed at Cartagena in 1610 AD.

Word came as soon as a ship entered the bay

When a slave ship came into the bay, the governor sent word to St. Peter Claver. Men raced to be the one who told him, because he promised Masses to whoever got there first.

He asked what language the new arrivals spoke. Then he gathered his interpreters and hurried down with baskets of biscuit, preserves, brandy, tobacco and lemons. He went down into the holds after the sick.

Brother Nicolás González was with him for twenty-two years. He once asked St. Peter Claver how many of the enslaved he had baptized. St. Peter Claver said that by his own count it was more than three hundred thousand.

Four years in one room

In 1650 AD he wore himself out getting the city ready for the jubilee. Then news reached Cartagena that the plague had reached the shores of Terra Firma and was killing people there. He was already worn out. He went out along the coast to the African settlements anyway, to get them ready for the jubilee too. He came back from the missions of Tolú and Sinú so ill that his work at the ships ended there.

He spent the next four years in his room. The plague had left the college with very few Jesuits. Each of them was doing several jobs, and they could not look after him. The young enslaved boy assigned to look after him brought his food cold, often after eating the best of it. Some days he left St. Peter Claver alone from morning to night. St. Peter Claver never complained about the boy. What he said he minded was not being helped to dress, so that he could get to Mass.

The day he had already named

Towards the middle of this year he began telling people that his death was close. He told Brother Nicolás González that it would come on a feast of Our Lady.

The last time he left his room was on Sunday, September 6. Two African men held him up while he went down to the church. He received Communion, and he was carried back. Passing the sacristy he said to the brother there, “I am going to die; what do you desire of me in the next life?” The brother asked him to pray for the city and the house. He promised that he would. That evening a violent fever took him.

Early yesterday a brother went in to ask how he had passed the night. He found St. Peter Claver unable to speak or move. The physician came and said no remedy was left. He was given the last anointing.

News that he was dying spread through Cartagena during the day. A few of the leading citizens were let in first. Then the crowd forced the door and filled the college, kissing his hands and touching their beads to him while he was still alive. Children ran through the streets calling out that the saint was dying.

The Africans of the city kissed his hands and wept over them. They said they had lost their protector and their father. People argued over who should provide the coffin, and Donna Isabella d’Urbina was allowed to give it.

He died between one and two o’clock this morning. The people at his bedside were saying the names of Jesus and Mary aloud. Today is the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a feast of Our Lady. That is the kind of day he had said months ago it would be.

When he stopped breathing, everyone in the room knelt to kiss his feet. His body was dressed in his priest’s vestments. His clothes and his bedding were torn up and carried away in pieces for relics. It was still dark when the body was laid out in the house.