Petrus Norbertus Donders (27 October 1809 – 14 January 1887) was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest and member of the Redemptorists.

[3] Reports in the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, a journal about various Catholic missions, attracted Donders interest to go abroad and work among the 'Indians' in America.

In 1856 apostolic vicar Jacobus Schepers appointed Donders pastor at the mission post of Batavia along the Coppename River.

This remote place, a former cocoa plantation, was a governmental leper colony (since 1824), having a permanent Catholic residence (since 1836).

He was vested in the habit by vicar Johannes Swinkels on 1 November 1866, and made his final vows in Paramaribo on 24 June 1867.

[6] In 1882 Donders was called back to Paramaribo by vicar Johannes Schaap who send him to Mary's Hope, a mission post in the Coronie District that was in fact a cotton plantation.

In October 1885 Schaap restationed Donders at Batavia, where he died due to a kidney infection (nephritis) on January 14, 1887.

In 1923, a memorial stone was placed at the site and a Surinam-like chapel erected, next to which a processional park was laid out.

[10] Donders' spiritual writings were approved by theologians on 13 December 1911, and his cause was formally opened on 14 May 1913, granting him the title of Servant of God.

A proposed miraculous healing in 1929 of the Tilburg born child Ludovicus Johann Westland was rejected twice by the Vatican medical commission of the Congregation for Rites, in 1931 and in 1936.

Then, on 25 March 1945, Pope Pius XII declared him venerable, which means that Donders had practiced his virtues 'to an heroic degree'.

[11] In 1976, the Redemptorists once again presented Westland's healing, but now with some new information; the bone infection had been cured overnight, which could not be explained naturally.

Exemption was granted for a second miracle that would have otherwise been needed for Donders to be beatified under the old rules that were still in force regarding sainthood causes.

Since the beatification in 1982 the 1926 bronze Petrus Donders statue in central Tilburg is subject to debate, because of its hierarchic composition.

The monument not only represents the Dutch mission and leper care in Suriname, it is also identified with colonialism and slavery.

In an open letter the Dutch political party Ubuntu Connected Front (UCF) requested the municipality of Tilburg to move the sculpture, containing two human beings, out of public space.

In Tilburg we do not avoid the conversation about this, taking into account the deeply felt emotion of everyone to be seen, heard and appreciated.

Many people in Tilburg, although aware of multi-perspectivity, still find it difficult to imagine that Donders' statue with the kneeling black man brings back the image of African Surinamese as objects of patronizing care.

In the 1920s, this mixed discourse particularly appealed to Catholics in the Netherlands, because they had occupied a second-rate position in the country for centuries.