Wanted suspect makes disturbing statement about victim’s kids
September 21, 2017
PLAYER OF THE WEEK
September 26, 2017
The young Jesuit Peter Claver left his homeland in Spain forever in 1610 to be a missionary in the colonies of the New World. He sailed into Cartagena, Colombia, a rich port city. His bishop ordained him a priest in 1615.
The merchants had established the slave trade in the Americas for nearly 100 years, and Cartagena was its main port. Ten thousand slaves poured into the port each year after crossing the Atlantic from West Africa under conditions so foul and inhuman that an estimated one-third of the passengers died in transit. Although the Popes condemned the practice of slave-trading, it continued to flourish.
The following is a letter by St. Peter Claver describing the conditions he found in Cartagena.
“Yesterday, May 30, 1627, on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, numerous blacks, brought from the rivers of Africa, disembarked from a large ship. Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what else, we hurried toward them. 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. Many of the sick were lying on the wet ground or rather in puddles of mud. To prevent excessive dampness, someone had thought of building up a mound with a mixture of tiles and broken pieces of bricks. This, then, was their couch, a very uncomfortable one not only for that reason, but especially because they were naked, without any clothing to protect them.”
“We laid aside our cloaks, therefore, and brought from a warehouse whatever was handy to build a platform. In that way we covered a space to which we at last transferred the sick, by forcing a passage through bands of slaves. Then we divided the sick into two groups: one group my companion approached with an interpreter, while I addressed the other group. There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold; we could scarcely detect their pulse.”
“With the help of a tile we pulled some live coals together and placed them in the middle near the dying men. Into this fire we tossed aromatics. Of these we had two wallets full, and we used them all up this time. Then, using our own cloaks, for they had nothing of this sort, and to ask the owners for others would have been a waste of words, we gave them a smoke treatment, 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.”
“This was how we spoke to them, not with words but with our hands and our actions. In fact, convinced as they were that they had been brought here to be eaten, any other language would have proved utterly useless. Then we sat, or rather knelt, beside them and bathed their faces and bodies with wine. We tried to encourage them with friendly gestures and displayed in their presence the emotions that somehow naturally tend to hearten the sick.”
“After this we began an elementary instruction about baptism, that is, the wonderful effects of the sacrament on body and soul. When by their answers to our questions they showed they had sufficiently understood this, we went on to a more extensive instruction, namely, about the one God, who rewards and punishes each according to his merit, and the rest. We asked them to make an act of contrition and to manifest their detestation of their sins.”
“Finally, when they appeared sufficiently prepared, we declared to them the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Passion. Showing them Christ fastened to the cross, as he is depicted on the baptismal font on which streams of blood flow down from his wounds, we led them in reciting an act of contrition in their own language.”
