At our recent Diocesan Clergy Conference, Fr. Pablo Migone gave an update on the Georgia Martyrs.  A full two centuries before St. Junipero Serra preached to the Native Americans along the West Coast, his brother Franciscan friars from Spain were spreading the Gospel in what are now the southeastern states.  Their mission base was St. Augustine—the oldest still-inhabited city in our nation, founded in 1565. It was along the coast that we call home that the Christian faith first took root in the lands that today form the United States. Here were the first Mass, the first construction of a church, the first baptisms, and the first Christian conversions in what is now our nation.
 
Long before the founding of the first permanent English colony in America at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607—and longer still before the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock (1620), Jesuit and then Franciscan missionaries established missions in what are now Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. They labored with remarkable courage and devotion to evangelize native peoples of the region, and tens of thousands were baptized, catechized, and provided the sacraments.
 
By 1597 there were five permanent missions in Coastal Georgia where Franciscan friars preached the Gospel, learned the indigenous Guale language, and lived peacefully with the native population.  These missions were staffed by six men who left behind the comforts of home in Spain to live as the natives did, in huts made of tree trunks, branches, and mud, thatched with palmetto fronds. Agriculture was primitive, yielding at best a few humble garden items to supplement a diet of gathered acorns, local shellfish and wild game from the forest. The names of the Franciscan friars were Pedro de Corpa, Blas Rodríguez, Miguel de Añon, Antonio de Badajóz, Francisco de Veráscola, and Francisco de Avila.  Unfortunately,
all but de Avila were murdered on September 14, 16, and 17 in 1597.
 
Most Guale natives had embraced Christianity but Juanillo, who was the heir to a Guale chiefdom wanted to take a second wife.  Friar Pedro de Corpa, assigned to the mission of Tolomato (near Eulonia, Georgia), told him that he could not because he was a baptized Christian.  Juanillo opposed Friar Pedro’s fidelity to the Christian teaching on marriage and killed him on September 14th, 1597.  In the following days, Juanillo and the men he assembled continued to the other missions to kill all the friars, only Friar Francisco de Avila escaped martyrdom.  
 
The process for the beatification of Pedro de Corpa and Companions, or the Georgia Martyrs as they are commonly called, has already been completed by the Diocese of Savannah.  The hope is that they might be beatified in three or four years.  But for that to happen, there is currently a need for greater devotion to these martyrs and also more awareness about their story. These five men left everything that was familiar to them in Spain to share the Good News of Jesus Christ in distant lands. They died as witnesses to the Christian faith as they shared with others what they themselves had received.
 
Since one of the friars was Padre Miguel or Fr. Michael, I thought as a faith community, we might explore a special devotion to him.  He was pastor of Santa Catalina de Guale Mission on Saint Catherines Island which is the island 30 miles to the south of us.
 
 
The Martyrs' Prayer
 
 
O Lord Jesus Christ, reward the apostolic zeal of Friar Pedro de Corpa and his four companion friars, Blas, Miguel, Antonio and Francisco, who labored for the spiritual well-being of the native Guale people of Georgia and gave their lives in witness to the Christian faith.
 
Through their merits and intercession graciously grant the favor I humbly ask of You, so that, for the glory of Your Name, their heroic sacrifice may be officially recognized by the Church. Amen.

Fr. Jerry Ragan