Two priests spoke to two dying men without words
A priest carried oranges and lemons down to a ship in 1627 AD, and told two dying men what he meant without words.
About this picture
AI-generated image, in the manner of a seventeenth-century Spanish colonial oil painting on canvas, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Peter Claver. Engraving by J. Vitta after P. Gagliardi (Giuseppe Vitta, engraver, active 1888, after Pietro Gagliardi, painter, 1809-1890; printed by Joseph Spellani, after 1888 AD, Wellcome Collection, London, reference 6820i). View source artwork.
Two baskets of oranges and lemons
ROME, September 9, 2026 AD — Two baskets of fruit. One ship, just landed. St. Peter Claver went down to the harbour to meet it. The next day he wrote down what he had seen.
He wrote it at Cartagena de Indias, on May 31, 1627 AD. On the day the Church keeps for him, the reading isn’t a life story written by other people. It’s that letter.
St. Peter Claver was a Jesuit priest of the college at Cartagena. Between 1580 and 1640 AD that city was the main slave port of all Spanish America. Ten or twelve thousand African people were landed on its wharves in a year. They were bought on the coasts of Guinea, Angola and the Congo for about four crowns each. In the city they were sold for two hundred or more. St. Peter Claver worked among the people landed there for forty-four years. He died in the city in 1654 AD.
A fire raked together with a tile
The letter starts with the errand. “Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what else, we hurried toward them,” St. Peter Claver wrote.
The rooms where the new arrivals had been put were packed. “When we approached their quarters, we thought we were entering another Guinea. We had to force our way through the crowd until we reached the sick,” he wrote. The sick were lying on wet ground and in puddles of mud. Someone had piled up tiles and broken brick to keep off the damp. That pile was their bed. They were naked, with nothing to cover them.
So the two priests took off their cloaks. They fetched whatever was handy from a warehouse, built a platform and moved the sick onto it. Two of the men could not be spoken to at all. “There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold, whose pulse could scarcely be detected,” he wrote.
The priests raked live coals together with a tile and set them down near the two men. Onto the fire they threw the aromatics they had brought: “of these we had two wallets full, and we used them all up on this occasion.” There was nothing to wrap the two men in, and asking their owners for anything would have been a waste of breath. So the priests flapped their own cloaks to push the warm smoke over them, “by which they seemed to recover their warmth and the breath of life. The joy in their eyes as they looked at us was something to see.”
Not one word
No one had explained to the two men what was happening. Not one word. St. Peter Claver says in the letter why. “This was how we spoke to them, not with words but with our hands and our actions. And in fact, convinced as they were that they had been brought here to be eaten, any other language would have proved utterly useless.”
Then the priests turned to wine: “Then we sat, or rather knelt, beside them and bathed their faces and bodies with wine.” The teaching came last, and it came in stages, starting with baptism. St. Peter Claver showed the men the figure of Christ fastened to the cross. It was painted on the baptismal font, with streams of blood running down from the wounds. Then he led them in an act of sorrow for their sins, in their own language.
The prayer the Church says over his day calls him, in Latin, servorum servum (a slave of slaves).
About this story
Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.
The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.
Junior Report. Written for readers ten to twelve, from the same sources and under the same rules as the rest of the paper. The words are shorter, hard terms are explained, and the question at the end is for the reader to think over.
Read more
- · Peter Claver, letter of 31 May 1627 (Office of Readings, 9 September)
- · The same letter, Crossroads Initiative
Image. AI-generated image, in the manner of a seventeenth-century Spanish colonial oil painting on canvas, from the paper's reference portrait based on Saint Peter Claver. Engraving by J. Vitta after P. Gagliardi (Giuseppe Vitta, engraver, active 1888, after Pietro Gagliardi, painter, 1809-1890; printed by Joseph Spellani, after 1888 AD, Wellcome Collection, London, reference 6820i). — see the original.
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Sources for this story
Listed by paragraph.
- Paragraph 1
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, ¶1
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, C OLLECT ¶100
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶63
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶53
- Paragraph 2
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶63
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶53
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, ¶1
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, C OLLECT ¶100
- Paragraph 3
- attested J. R. Slattery (John Richard Slattery, 1851–1929), ed., The Life of St. Peter Claver, S.J.: The Apostle of the Negroes, CHAPTER I. ¶1 (HE PURCHASES INTERPRETERS.)
- attested Diego Fares, S.J., Una nueva lectura de la vida de San Pedro Claver, APOYA A LACIVILTACATTOLICA.ES ¶46
- attested J. R. Slattery (John Richard Slattery, 1851–1929), ed., The Life of St. Peter Claver, S.J.: The Apostle of the Negroes, CHAPTER I. ¶3
- attested Pierre Suau, St. Peter Claver — The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 11, ¶9
- documented Pope Leo XIII, In Plurimis — Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on the Abolition of Slavery, LEO XIII ¶12
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶52
- documented Pope Francis, Apostolic Journey to Colombia: Holy Mass, Port of Contecar, Cartagena, HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS ¶19
- attested Tridentine Mass propers blog, from the Missale Romanum, Traditional Latin Mass propers in English: Saint Peter Claver (1654 AD); Saint Gorgonius (303 AD), SAINT GORGONIUS ¶5
- attested Bertrand Gabriel Fleuriau, S.J. (1693–1773), from the French, The Life of the Venerable Father Claver, S.J., Apostle of the West Indies; and Memoirs of the Religious Life of Cardinal Odescalchi, S.J., FATHER PETER CLAVER., p. 273 ¶1
- attested J. R. Slattery (John Richard Slattery, 1851–1929), ed., The Life of St. Peter Claver, S.J.: The Apostle of the Negroes, HIS DEATH. ¶3
- attested Diego Fares, S.J., Una nueva lectura de la vida de San Pedro Claver, EDICIÓN INTERNACIONAL ¶47
- Paragraph 4
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, C OLLECT ¶102
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings
- Paragraph 5
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶55
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, Office of Readings ¶102
- Paragraph 6
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, C OLLECT ¶103
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶56
- Paragraph 7
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, C OLLECT ¶103
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶58
- Paragraph 8
- Paragraph 9
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, C OLLECT ¶104
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶59
- documented Peter Claver, S.J.; Liturgy of the Hours, From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest — second reading, Office of Readings for 9 September; with the Collect and Mass readings of the memorial, C OLLECT ¶105
- documented Peter Claver, S.J., Saint Peter Claver's Ministry to Slaves — the letter of 31 May 1627 as printed in the Roman Office of Readings, Section Nav, p. 31 ¶61
- Paragraph 10
