『Georgia Martyrs: Beatification October 31, 2026』のカバーアート

Georgia Martyrs: Beatification October 31, 2026

Georgia Martyrs: Beatification October 31, 2026

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Georgia Martyrs Beatification: October 31, 2026 St. Francis Would Be Proud Polyandry, or a woman taking multiple husbands, is an obscure marital custom. In the few remote Himalayan villages where it may be practiced, brothers marry the same woman to protect rights to family property. Polygamy, or a man taking multiple wives, has always been, and is still, found globally, typically in higher social strata. Only high-status men of exalted power and wealth can take more than one wife. In a harem culture, more low-status women have access to more high-status men precisely because those men are not monogamous. This sometimes leaves low status men with fewer options for marriage among their own, leading to male-on-male class resentment or to low status men coalescing around a chief or cacique. Men's natural tendency towards polygamy in pagan cultures had to be bucked like a bronco before a tamer Christian culture flourish. And it was Catholic missionaries who did the taming. It was hard won and took centuries, but the teaching of priests and nuns and the witness of Christian couples eventually prevailed. At times, though, the price was paid in warm blood. Today's martyrs, all celibate Franciscan priests and brothers, spilled their blood in the soil of Georgia for marriage, for monogamy. Such sacrifice is a golden thread in the tapestry of the saints. Herod Antipas beheaded St. John the Baptist for criticizing Herod's marriage to Herodias while his first wife was still alive. St. Thomas More was decapitated for, among a related web of issues, refusing to endorse the polygamy of his lusty King. St. Charles Lawanga and Companions were burned alive after refusing the disordered advances of their king, who counted more than a dozen wives. Even Kolbe sacrificed his life for a marriage. An Indian sub-chief named Juanillo plotted the bloody end of today's martyrs. Juanillo is a diminutive of Juan, so he could be called Little John. Juanillo was a baptized convert from the Guale tribe in modern day coastal Georgia. He had a wife but wanted another one. Juanillo was a high-status male in a traditional indigenous culture accepting of polygamy. No shortage of women thirsted to be a wife of a chief. Juanillo could have as many wives as he wanted. And no priest, especially a white European priest, would deny him what nature commanded. The Spanish Conquistador Ponce De Leon christened as "La Isla de Pascua Florida" the modern state of Florida when he and his countrymen first spied it in 1513. They thought it was an island. The name can be translated as "The Island of Easter Flowers," reflecting the ships' arrival during Holy Week. Eventually "La Florida" came to mean virtually the entire southeastern United States, as Spanish, French, and English adventurers pushed deeper into the immense continent of which Florida was just a modest protrusion. The struggle to evangelize the native tribes of Florida throughout the 1500s was one battle after another. Hurricanes roiled the sea. Ships sank. Men drowned. Provisions were lost. The soil was thin. Nothing grew. Colonists starved. Priests were slaughtered by natives to pay long standing debts incurred by colonists' offenses. No miraculous tilma ever appeared to dazzle the neophytes. No demon-topped temples were razed or hulking colonial churches built over them. Florida was nothing like Mexico. The 1500s was a lost century, a long trail of tears, for the Spanish in Florida. In the 1590s, Franciscan friars disembarked on coastal Georgia to once again try to establish missions among the Indigenous tribes of that region, among them the Guale people. The Franciscans did not build cities on a hill. They lived among the people in primitive lodgings, ate what the natives ate, and learned their tongue. They preached, administered the sacraments, and taught the basic Christian message, which conflicted with indigenous customs in some areas. And thus it came to pass that the path of the Indian and the path of Christ crossed. Father Pedro de Corpa insisted that Juanillo, a baptized Catholic, be permanently faithful to his one wife, none other and none else. Fr. Corpa was killed on September 14, 1597 and his severed head placed on a stake. Juanillo and his band of frenzied young men then went on a hunt for more prey. Over the next four days they knifed, decapitated, and slaughtered Fathers Blas Rodríguez, Miguel de Añon, and Francisco de Veráscola, and Brother Antonio de Badajóz in missions along the Georgia coast and its Sea Islands. The Catholic Church has determined that the five Franciscans were murdered in "odium fidei" - “out of hatred for the faith.” They were not killed primarily because they were Spanish or because they were colonists but because of the faith they preached and witnessed to. Today's martyrs did not find the fountain of youth in greater Florida but the fountain of eternal life. Their holy images now rest on our noble altars, where ...
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