October 19, 2025 Essay: Our Other Patron Saints
The recently renovated Lady Chapel is open for private prayer every afternoon from 1 PM to 4 PM. One aspect of the renovation is the masterful restoration of the reredos behind the altar. The reredos came from the Jesuit retreat house in Manhasset, NY, and features the statues of four Jesuit saints: St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and two others who might be less well known, St. Isaac Jougues, S.J. and St. René Goupil, S.J. These last are part of a group of saints known as the North American Martyrs. Their feast day is today, October 19th, and I would like to introduce them to the parish. They are collectively the Patron Saints of the Jesuits of North America.
The North American Martyrs represent a profound chapter of 17th-century missionary zeal and ultimate sacrifice. This group consists of eight French Jesuit missionaries—six priests and two lay brothers—who were martyred between 1642 and 1649 while attempting to evangelize the Indigenous peoples of New France, which now encompasses parts of Canada and upstate New York. Their lives of extraordinary commitment and their brutal deaths cemented their legacy, culminating in their collective canonization as the first saints of the North American continent.
The eight martyrs are: St. Isaac Jogues (priest), St. René Goupil (lay brother), St. Jean de Lalande (lay brother), St. Jean de Brébeuf (priest), St. Antoine Daniel (priest), St. Gabriel Lalemant (priest), St. Charles Garnier (priest), and St. Noël Chabanel (priest).
These Jesuits arrived in the New World with the sole purpose of spreading the Catholic faith. Their primary mission was among the Huron people, a group often at war with the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, particularly the Mohawk. The missionaries established their center at Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, enduring immense physical hardship as they adopted a new language and culture, traveling vast distances by canoe and foot through the rugged wilderness. They lived in harsh conditions, facing hunger, disease, and the constant threat of intertribal warfare.
Beyond the spiritual objective, the Jesuits were also perceived as agents of the French Crown, a factor that complicated their relationship with the Iroquois, who were often aligned with the French rivals, the Dutch and English. This geopolitical conflict would tragically intertwine with their evangelistic efforts, marking them as targets in a wider struggle for territorial and cultural dominance.
The first to be killed was St. René Goupil in 1642. A lay helper with surgical skills, Goupil was captured with St. Isaac Jogues by a Mohawk war party. He was tomahawked after being discovered making the Sign of the Cross over a child. St. Isaac Jogues endured 13 months of horrific captivity, during which he was tortured and mutilated, losing several fingers (the missing fingers on his statue in the Lady Chapel are not the result of careless transport but intentional). He eventually escaped with the aid of the Dutch, returned to France, but, demonstrating incredible zeal, petitioned to return to the missions, famously stating, “It would be indecent for a martyr of Christ not to drink the blood of Christ” (referencing his inability to hold the Eucharist properly with his mutilated hands). He and his companion, St. Jean de Lalande, were eventually captured again and martyred at the Mohawk village of Ossernenon (present-day Auriesville, New York) in 1646.
The remaining five Jesuits met their end in what is now Southern Ontario, Canada, during the brutal Iroquois assault on the Huron missions in 1648 and 1649. St. Jean de Brébeuf, a giant of a man and a pioneering linguist of the Huron language, along with St. Gabriel Lalemant, endured the most protracted and gruesome torture before their deaths. Their courage in the face of unspeakable agony became legendary, with their captors reportedly eating Brébeuf’s heart to gain his bravery. St. Antoine Daniel, St. Charles Garnier, and St. Noël Chabanel were also killed in the chaos of the final Iroquois raids, refusing to abandon their convert.
The collective martyrdom of these men, though ending their physical mission, served as a powerful testament to their faith and courage. In 1930, they were canonized as a group by Pope Pius XI, becoming the first canonized saints from North America.
Their significance endures for several reasons: they were foundational figures in the establishment of the Catholic Church in both Canada and the United States; their written accounts, the Jesuit Relations, provided invaluable ethnographic and historical records of 17th-century North America; and their willingness to endure suffering and death for their beliefs remains a profound symbol of evangelistic commitment. The North American Martyrs are venerated not just for their piety, but for the heroic measure of their fortitude, which transcends their specific religious context and stands as an enduring symbol of sacrificial love.
— Fr. Michael Hilbert, S.J., Associate Pastor