First Word from the Cross: Older Than America — The Blood of the Martyrs
National Catholic Register, 30 March 2026
‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’
Editor’s note: Father Raymond J. de Souza recorded meditations on the Seven Last Words at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Ogdensburg, New York. They will air on EWTN on Good Friday at 1:00 p.m. (EDT). It will also be available at ewtn.com and EWTN+. From now until Good Friday, those meditations will be published at the Register.
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“Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’” (Luke 23:32-34)
Jesus begs forgiveness for those who crucified him. He provides the pattern for Christian martyrdom: fidelity to God and charity toward enemies. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:44),” Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. He practices what he preached in his first word from the Cross. The first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, would pray as he was being stoned, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).
The signers of the Declaration, professing a “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence … [pledged] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
That is a pledge of martyrdom, or at least analogously so — pledging even one’s life to a project considered favorable to Providence. The martyrs live that out. They suffer the loss of their lives because they will not offend against the ultimate sacred honor — the honor of God and his laws and decrees.
A few weeks after Fulton Sheen is beatified this fall, a group of Franciscans known as the “Georgia Martyrs” will be declared blessed in Savannah, Georgia, on the vigil of the solemn feast of All Saints. The Georgia Martyrs remind us of two important historical facts, namely that the Catholic faith is older than the United States in North America, and that the land was consecrated by the blood of martyrs long before any soldiers fell in the Revolutionary War.
Americans are good about remembering the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, sailing over on the Mayflower in 1620 seeking religious liberty, and relief from the post-Reformation confessional turmoil in Europe. But the Catholic faith arrived much before that. Following the crossing of Christopher Columbus in 1492 — sailing under the patronage of Spain’s royal couple, Ferdinand and Isabella — Spanish missionaries brought the faith to the Caribbean, Mexico and northward along the east and west coasts, to California and Florida.
The apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe took place in 1531. Further north, French missionaries arrived in Quebec with Jacques Cartier in 1535, who planted a Cross to mark his arrival that summer. The subsequent history of the United States would be more Protestant than Catholic, given the British colonization, but the Catholic faith was here first.
The Georgia Martyrs were five Spanish Franciscan friars, migrating north from Florida into what is now Georgia. They lived among the native Guale (gwal-lay) people along the coast, evangelizing, catechizing and providing sacraments.
In 1597, a local Indigenous leader, Juanillo, decided to take a second wife, a traditional custom for chiefs. The Franciscans forbade it, as it was incompatible with the Catholic faith and Juanillo had been baptized. He asked for an exception; the friars told him that it was impossible.
In response, Juanillo killed one priest with a stone hatchet on Sept. 14, 1597. He and a band of men proceeded to attack the other Guale missions in the area, killing all of the friars except one, Francisco de Ávila, whom they kidnapped and tortured for 10 months. The governor of St. Augustine had to secure his release.
De Ávila refused to testify against the men in a trial because he knew they would be put to death if convicted.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
The five friars were martyred for their defense of marriage. De Ávila was not martyred, but showed mercy toward the killers, refusing to cooperate with the death penalty at a time when it was common.
The historic panels here under the window of the Last Supper depict priestly martyrs: Juan de Padilla, martyred in 1541 in what is now Kansas; Isaac Jogues, the French Jesuit martyred in Auriesville, New York, in 1646; and Leo Heinrichs, a German Franciscan, shot dead while celebrating Mass in 1908 in Denver. The first two died long before 1776.
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