St. Peter Claver, who was renowned his missionary work as a Jesuit priest in South America was celebrated on his feast day recently.

"Today is the Feast of St. Peter Claver, a 17th century Jesuit missionary who dedicated his life to serving African slaves who were brought to South America against their will,” the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee tweeted Friday.

St. Peter Claver was born in 1581 in Verdú, Spain, and died in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1654.

He became a Jesuit priest in 1616, Britannica says, and was sent to Cartagena, where he witnessed the horrors of the slave trade and dedicated himself to helping those enslaved.

He ministered to the sick and kept company with the slaves in Colombia where he taught them about Christianity. He converted and baptized an estimated 300,000 slaves. For that, St. Peter Claver was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1896. Pope Leo declared him “patron of all Roman Catholic missions to African peoples” Britannica adds.

When he was in Colombia, many European colonists continued the slave trade despite Pope Paul III’s condemnation of the practice. The Jesuits (Society of Jesus) admit that their order enslaved many during those times and today they call it a “deeply regretful chapter” for the group.

When it came to relating to the enslaved, Peter’s philosophy was that “We must speak to them with our hands before we try to speak to them with our lips,” jesuits.org credits him with saying. He baptized many children on the slave ships that he lived on.

St. Peter’s humility and his dedication to bettering the lives of the slaves are cited as reasons he was gifted with the ability to perform miracles, according to jesuits.org. He is said to have been able to heal the sick just as Christ did.

John Grondelski, in an article for the National Catholic Register (NCR), writes about how St. Peter Claver’s life serves as an example of perseverance while the Church and the state battled over the issue of slavery.

“It would still take three centuries for much of the world to recognize the incongruity between human dignity and slavery, something Claver already knew,” Grondelski writes. “And slavery continues, in various forms under different names, today. Our own society, too, can be blind to its moral failings: I am certain there will be a day when people look back on the 20th and 21st century to ask, ‘How could they believe killing their unborn babies was a ‘human right?’ Perhaps we still have something to learn from Peter Claver: about persistence in our time and patience in God’s.”