The five Spanish Franciscan friars collectively known as the “Georgia Martyrs” will be beatified in Savannah, Georgia, on Oct. 31, according to a recent Vatican announcement.

Cardinal Francis Leo of the Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada, will celebrate the beatification, according to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

In September 1597, the five Franciscans were killed for defending the sanctity of marriage at a mission in present-day Georgia. In January 2025, Pope Francis recognized Father Pedro de Corpa, Father Blas Rodríguez, Father Miguel de Añon, Brother Antonio de Badajóz, and Father Francisco de Veráscola as martyrs.

The missionaries left their homes in Spain to evangelize and minister to the Indigenous people, about two decades before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. They lived among the native Gaule people along the coast of Georgia, evangelizing, catechizing, and providing sacraments. Often a single Franciscan friar would serve in a village of 1,000, according to the Georgia Martyrs website.

Conflict arose when an heir to a Guale chiefdom, a young Indigenous man named Juanillo, sought to take a second wife as was the Guale custom. Father de Corpa told him that as a baptized Christian, he couldn’t have multiple wives and that he would oppose his succession as chief if he persisted.

In response, Juanillo killed the 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 Avila, whom they kidnapped and tortured for 10 months until the governor of St. Augustine secured his release.

De Avila refused to testify against the men in a trial because he knew they would be put to death. His personal account of the episode would later be used as a source by Luís Gerónimo de Oré in “The Martyrs of Florida” (c. 1619). Though the original manuscript was never recovered, it, along with two other primary sources, are the principal sources of information for the martyrs’ stories.

The cause for canonization of the Georgia Martyrs officially began in 1950. A documentary of their lives, “For the Sake of the Gospel,” released in 2024, can be viewed here.