On Jan. 27, 2025, Pope Francis authorized the beatification of Venerable Servant of God Pedro de Corpa, OFM, and his four companions (Friar Blas Rodríguez, Friar Miguel de Añon, Friar Antonio de Badajoz and Friar Francisco de Veráscola). Known as the Georgia Martyrs, these five Spanish Franciscan friars gave their lives for their faith in 1597 in what is now the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia. (Click to read more)

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The Church’s presence in the American South, then known as la Florida, began roughly two centuries before St. Junípero Serra established missions in California. Missionaries brought the Gospel to Indigenous communities throughout what are now Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. Along coastal Georgia, the five martyrs served among the Guale people.
 

In September 1597, the friars were killed during an uprising aimed at driving missionaries from the region. A central source of conflict was their defense of the sacrament of Christian marriage. The uprising ultimately failed, and the Guale later welcomed other Franciscans, who continued serving their communities for generations.
 

Expansion and attacks by British colonists eventually devastated the Catholic missions and displaced the Guale communities. Yet the martyrs’ legacy endures, as does the memory of the missionaries’ work to teach the faith in the Guale language. A catechism and primer in that language, now lost, is believed to have been the first book written in what is now the United States.