Martyred in Defense of Marriage: The Story of Father Pedro de Corpa and His Companions in Georgia
On September 13, 1597, a Guale warrior named Juanillo attacked and killed Father Pedro de Corpa in what is now the state of Georgia.
On January 27, 2025, Pope Francis authorized a decree designating Father de Corpa and four companions as martyrs. The four-and-a-quarter-century trip between those two points illustrates the power of virtue over what many consider politically expedient.
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The Guale were an Indian tribe located along North America’s Atlantic coast, primarily in Georgia. Its name is unfamiliar because the tribe slowly declined throughout the seventeenth century due to a combination of disease and warfare with other tribes. By the time the English established the Georgia Colony in 1732, the few surviving Guale descendants had been absorbed into different tribes.
A Tribal Dispute
However, for about a decade before 1597, Spanish Franciscan missionaries worked extensively with the Guale and other tribes along the coast, operating out of today’s Saint Augustine, Florida. That mission system resembles the one Saint Junipero Serra established in California almost two hundred years later.
Juanillo was a man of considerable influence in the Guale world. His father or uncle—sources disagree—was Don Francisco, the cacique (chief) of the Guale village of Tolomato, located about fifty miles south of Savannah. Most assumed that Juanillo would one day take the cacique’s position. At some point, Juanillo was baptized and later married inside the Church. However, polygamy had been rampantly practiced among the Guale before their conversions. Juanillo decided to take a second wife.
Fray Pedro de Corpa1 was in charge of the nearby Tolomato mission. He immediately objected, publically rebuking Juanillo’s marital infidelity. When Juanillo persisted in his sinful behavior, Father de Corpa used his influence with the community to prevent the polygamist from undermining the faith in the thriving Christian community by becoming cacique.
A Martyrdom For God and Traditional Marriage
However, it was the Franciscan defense of marriage that incurred Juanillo’s wrath. While Father de Corpa said his morning prayers, Juanillo entered the priest’s dwelling and clubbed him to death.
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This murder was, however, only the beginning of what some historians call Juanillo’s Revolt and others refer to as the Guale Uprising. As long as any missionary was alive, Juanillo would never be able to live in his polygamous state.
While the Tolomato mission was predominantly Catholic, many non-Christian Guale lived in the woods outside of the mission. From these, Juanillo assembled a small band of followers. Over the next few days, Juanillo traveled around to the other Guale missions, killing—or convincing other Guale leaders to kill—Fray Blas Rodríguez, Fray Miguel de Añon, Brother Antonio de Badajoz and Fray Francisco de Veráscola.2
Additionally, a “white martyrdom”—one not resulting in death—awaited Fray Francisco de Avila. He briefly escaped, was wounded, captured and enslaved. He lived on bits of food and wore scraps of cloth while he became a sort of common servant for the Guale village. All the time, the villagers mentally and physically tortured him in an attempt to force him to break his priestly vows. In June 1598—after nine months of captivity—a Spanish military patrol rescued the priest. He was eventually taken to Havana and, restored to health, wrote the only eyewitness account of any aspect of the Revolt.
The Aftermath
When news of the killings got to Spain, King Philip III’s first inclination was to abandon Florida. The colony was never economically successful, and now the natives were murdering the men sent to carry the True Faith to them. However, before acting on such a plan, the King sent Fernando de Valdés, the son of Cuba’s governor, to investigate.
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In his book, The Cross in the Sand, Father Michael Gannon relates that “Valdés, to his surprise, found the Franciscans optimistic about the future of the missions and unanimous in their opposition to any plan for withdrawal…. By the end of 1603, the rebirth of the Guale missions was well underway.” The Spanish missions continued to operate until 1686.
The Path to Beatification
The process of beatification has taken a long one. This is because the Church is always careful in such matters. She has always been reluctant to declare men saints without careful scrutiny.
The five “Georgia Martyrs,” as they are known, left very little evidence. There was no substantial written work, and only two of the bodies were ever found—many years after the brutal killings. Therefore, the Church could not exercise the care it usually takes in such matters. In such an important matter, inaction was preferable to error.
Recognition at Last
Thus, the causes of the five martyrs lay dormant for over three hundred years. Then, interest in the Catholic history of the southern United States grew during the mid-twentieth century. In 1950, the Diocese of Savannah opened the cause of the five martyrs and appointed a commission to gather the available evidence. Their story found a place in the 1957 publication of The Martyrs of the United States of America, edited by the Most Reverend John Mark Gannon, Bishop of Erie, Pennsylvania. The Diocese of Savannah opened the cause and kept it active for decades. Finally, on September 14, 2022, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints approved the cause, paving the way to promulgating the January 2025 decree.
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With all of the twists and turns of Church procedure, one thing should not be forgotten. These five missionaries died in defense of Holy Matrimony. It may be that Our Lord withheld the recognition of these five exemplary men for a time like this when marriage is so roundly attacked. These five martyrs will be ardent intercessors in Heaven for all those seeking to live out God’s holy intention for the marital state and the conversion of those who do not.
Footnotes
- Most sources use the title “Fray” in connection with Pedro de Corpa and his companions. The title was common among Spanish Franciscans and is derived from the Latin term “frater.” The English equivalent is friar.
- Some sources use the name Francisco de Beráscola. In Spanish, “v” and “b” at the beginning of a word sound alike and are often mistaken for each other.
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