St. Peter Claver waited here for the ships from Africa

An altar in a container port

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, Colombia, September 10, 2017 AD — Pope Francis said the last Mass of his journey to Colombia this afternoon. He said it at the Port of Contecar, a container port on the bay of Cartagena that is still working. It was the last big gathering of a six-day visit. The theme of the visit was “Let us take the first step!”

All week he had listened to Colombians who had gone to the people who had harmed them. “For decades Colombia has yearned for peace,” he told the crowd. He asked them to take that same first step.

Ten thousand people a year, off the ships

This bay has a history of its own. Between 1580 and 1640 AD, Cartagena was the chief slave port of the whole Spanish empire in the Americas. Ten or twelve thousand Africans were landed here every year. They were bought for about four crowns each on the coasts of Guinea, Angola and the Congo. In the city they were sold again for two hundred, and sometimes more.

The priest who went down to the ships

St. Peter Claver was a Catalan priest at the Jesuit college in the old walled city. He went down to the slave ships in this harbour and baptised the people who came off them.

Brother Nicolás González was his companion for twenty-two years. He once asked St. Peter Claver how many of the enslaved he had baptised. By his own reckoning, the priest answered, it was more than 300,000.

At noon today Pope Francis prayed the Angelus. He prayed it in front of the Church of Saint Peter Claver, where the saint’s relics are kept. He described how St. Peter Claver had worked. “He waited for the ships from Africa to arrive at the New World’s main centre of commerce in slavery,” Pope Francis said. The priest and the people coming off the ships had no language in common. He often reached them without words. “For a caress surpasses all languages,” Pope Francis said.

Men who were afraid for the profits of the slave trade went on opposing St. Peter Claver, Pope Francis said. St. Peter Claver was ill for four years. He died in his room at the college on September 8, 1654 AD. Pope Leo XIII canonized him in 1888 AD.

“Slaves of peace, forever”

Pope Francis ended the Mass on St. Peter Claver. “We cannot just stand still,” he said. “He did not stand still: his first step was followed by further steps, then more and more.”

Then he gave the Colombians in front of him one last charge. “Bring them the embrace of peace, free of all violence. Be ‘slaves of peace, forever’. SLAVES OF PEACE, FOREVER.”

A helicopter took Pope Francis back to the airport of Cartagena at half past six. At seven o’clock he left by plane for Rome.