San Pedro Claver

San Pedro Claver was born in Spain in 1580 and joined the Jesuits in 1602, where he was assigned to travel to Spain’s colonies in the Americas.  He arrived in Cartagena in 1610, but spent six years studying in Bogotá before returning to Cartagena in 1616, where he was ordained as a priest.

Claver’s mentor, Alonso de Sandoval, worked with the slaves and wrote a book on their culture and customs.  It was this work that Claver continued, going to the slave ships when they arrived and treating the sick and providing sustenance to them.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, more than 14,000,000 black people were forcefully brought to the Americas.  One third died during the two months en route, aboard the dark, damp, dirty holds of the ships that were full of disease.  Claver became known as the “slave to the slaves” and spent almost forty years tending to them.  More than 10,000 slaves passed through Cartagena yearly, Cartagena was a major slave trading center.

It is thought that Claver baptized more than 300,000 slaves in his time.  He died in 1654 and was canonized as a Catholic Saint in 1888.  The High Altar in the church has a glass encasement containing his remains.

The beautiful baroque church and its cloisters were constructed between 1580 and 1654, the stone coming from Tierrabomba Island, which is nearby.

  

The center of the cloisters has a beautiful garden planted in it.  The middle tree is a Chrysophyllum caimito, a tropical fruit tree that can grow to 20 meters in height.

The cloisters housed a school and a convent, which is the Sanctuary Museum today, although it was also used as a hospital in 1775 and military barracks in 1861.

These bells were rung in celebration of the Colombian Declaration of Independence on July 20, 1810.

Apparently, on the second floor you can see San Pedro Claver’s living quarters, but we didn’t know that at the time and were not taken there.  We just visited the first-floor gallery of art and artifacts, which contains Pre-Colombian ceramics and many objects of religious art from the 17th Century.

 

I found the clothed saints a little creepy and they had quite a musty cloth smell about them, but some of them were over 300 years old, although I am sure the cloth wasn’t!

After the museum we took a look inside the church, where the remains of San Pedro Claver lie at the altar.

The main altar of the sanctuary is quite stunning.  It is a sculpture carved from Italian marble by the Italian Vittorio de Montarsolo and was installed in 1884.

A new dome was placed on the church in 1921.