Knights And Ladies Of Peter Claver Meet In Atlanta

By CNS

Published: September 11, 2003

ATLANTA (CNS) — More than 1,200 Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver attended the organization’s 88th national convention in Atlanta Aug. 1-6.

Supreme Knight Arthur C. McFarland challenged the convention participants to increase the membership of all local councils by 15 percent in the next year.

McFarland, a judge in Charleston, S.C., said recent increases in membership in the northern district may be a signal to split that district.

Archbishop John F. Donoghue called the fraternal organization, founded in 1909, a pillar of the church among the nation’s African-American Catholics. The Knights of Peter Claver is the largest predominantly black Catholic organization in the world.

In a homily at the main convention Mass Aug. 3, Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Lake Charles, La., described St. Peter Claver, the organization’s patron, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta as models of heroic witness against hopeless odds.

St. Peter Claver, a 17th-century Spanish Jesuit, was noted for his ministry in the Colombian seaport of Cartagena to thousands of African slaves shipped to the New World. Mother Teresa, who died in 1997, was admired around the world for her work with the poorest of the poor in India.

Bishop Braxton described the horrors of the “middle passage,” the slave ship route from Africa to the New World, noting that many of those crowded into the cargo holds of those ships did not survive the voyage.

He noted that recognition of the horrors of the slave ships brought a religious conversion to a slave ship captain, John Newton, who became an Anglican pastor and wrote “Amazing Grace,” a reflection on his conversion.

Like Mother Teresa in India three centuries later, St. Peter Claver ministered to the lowest of the low in America, Bishop Braxton said. He quoted the saint’s description of his ministry, “The work must come first, then we can hear the words.”

Two innovations marked the 2003 convention: a series of workshops on diseases and health concerns that particularly affect African-Americans and a computer center, where workshops on communications technology were offered.

The next convention of the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver is to be held in July 2004 in Louisville, Ky.