Peter Claver, Saint

Peter Claver, Saint (klā`vər), 1581–1654, Spanish Jesuit missionary, called the Apostle of the Blacks. He was sent to what is now Colombia in 1610 and began at once his life work of ministering to the bodies and souls of the West African slaves, then being imported in large numbers. He worked indefatigably under the most loathsome conditions and was generally unappreciated by Spanish officialdom and even by his colleagues. Feast: Sept. 9.

Bibliography

See A. Lunn, A Saint in the Slave Trade: Peter Claver (1935).