FILM: Even youngsters can watch, read, and be inspired by this film and its saintly subject.
In time for the feast day of St. Peter Claver on Sept. 9 comes a new EWTN film on the saint’s life, St. Peter Claver: Slave of the Slaves. His 17th-century story has never aged because it is grounded in the Gospel’s beatitudes and parables.
This new docudrama beautifully unfolds as St. Peter’s life story is examined within the beginning and ending framework of clergy meeting to hear reasons for the call for his canonization. Stern but fair, the examiners want to discover what made him a saint according to the memory of those who knew him. This framework opens the door to his life, beginning with his childhood in Spain and proceeding through his years ministering to, and converting, countless slaves traded in the markets in Cartagena, Colombia.
Viewers are introduced to Peter as a young teen on his parents’ farmland, where he rescues a bird, sets it free, and then leads a huge flock of sheep who follow him unreservedly. This is a telling scene because throughout this beautifully made docudrama, the saint-to-be never loses that childlike innocence. It is
