Bishops Honor Georgia Martyrs at Island Graves
Bishops and friars reached St. Catherines Island by boat Oct. 29 to pray at the missionaries’ burial site ahead of their Oct. 31 beatification.
On October 29, 2026, bishops, priests, Franciscans, and other pilgrims traveled by longboat and dirt roads to St. Catherines Island, Georgia, to celebrate Mass at the mission church where two of the Georgia Martyrs are buried, two days before their beatification on October 31.
Bishop Stephen D. Parkes of Savannah led seven visiting bishops, including Bishop Erik T. Pohlmeier of St. Augustine, together with Friar Gianni Califano, postulator of the cause from Rome, twelfth-generation collateral descendants of Friar Francisco, and more than 40 pilgrims.
Five friars who died for marriage and the Gospel
Five Franciscan friars—Pedro de Corpa, Blas Rodríguez, Miguel de Añón, Antonio de Badajóz, and Francisco de Veráscola—came from Spain as missionaries to the Guale people of coastal Georgia, unaccompanied by soldiers. They were killed within days of one another in 1597 on the order of the future chief Juanillo after Father Pedro de Corpa upheld the Church’s teaching on marriage when Juanillo sought to take a second wife.
Friars Antonio and Miguel, who served at Mission Santa Catalina de Guale on the island, had been warned of the attack but chose to remain with the Guale people and spent their final hours in prayer. The Spanish left the mission for good in 1680. The site was lost for centuries until archaeologist David Hurst Thomas, senior curator in residence at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, rediscovered it in the 1980s using proton magnetometry. The first three test pits uncovered the mission’s well, kitchen, and church.
Franciscan Father Conrad Harkins, the late vice postulator for the cause, joined the digs. The team found the graves of Friars Antonio and Miguel, which Thomas described as the only two known graves of the Georgia Martyrs. The mission church, where 432 Guale Catholics are buried, is marked by palm trees and has been used by four bishops for Mass over the years.
Holy ground and a call to witness
Franciscan Brother Henry Fulmer of the Province of Our Lady of Guadalupe called the site “a place of holy ground” that was “very sacred.” Brother Peter Boegel said it was “incredibly humbling to have Mass on the site where the two Franciscans were martyred and buried,” adding that the friars’ sacrifice led him to embrace a willingness to “promote the kingdom of God.”
Thomas said he was struck by the thousands expected to attend the Oct. 31 beatification. The Diocese of Savannah also planned to lead visiting bishops and pilgrims to Fort King George in Darien, Georgia, where Friar Francisco de Veráscola is believed to have served.
The Georgia Martyrs’ witness—mission without arms, fidelity to indissoluble marriage, and perseverance unto death—stands as a living reminder of the Church’s first proclamation along this coast and of the cost of remaining with the people one has been sent to serve.