The Catholic Patriotic Minute #68: The North American Martyrs
Catholics For Catholics Special Edition | October 27th, 2026
The North American Martyrs: Catholic Missionaries Who Gave Their Lives to Save Souls in the New World
Every year on October 19, American Catholics honor the feast of the North American Martyrs. They were French Catholic missionaries, who established and served missions in what is today Canada and the United States. All eight were killed because their sole mission was to save souls.
It all began when Father Jean de Brébeuf–a newly-ordained Jesuit priest from France–was inspired to begin missions to New France, parts of present-day Canada and the United States. He was aware that martyrdom may be the consequence of evangelizing in the New World.
In 1626, Father Jean de Brébeuf joined the Huron people in New France. For the two subsequent decades, Father Brébeuf worked alongside the Hurons and learned their language. In 1636, Father Brébeuf brought more missionary priests to New France, including Father Isaac Jogues.
At this time, the Hurons and the Iroquois Confederacy were waging war with each other. The Iroquois Confederacy was an alliance of six tribes, the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk in the 1600s. These allied tribes aimed to defend themselves against European settlers and to attack their enemy tribes.
The Iroquois kidnapped Father Isaac Jogues and René Goupil, a layman missionary, in 1642 and brought them to Ossernon, a Mohawk village located today in present-day Auriesville, New York. They were enslaved and tortured. A few weeks later, René Goupil was caught blessing a Mohawk child by making a sign of the cross on his forehead. On September 29, 1642, Goupil was killed by a tomahawk blow.
Father Isaac Jogues buried René Goupil in an unmarked grave in the Ravine, which is now a reliquary at the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, New York. Now, Father Jogues was imprisoned for thirteen months. When he could find a moment to himself outside of his time of hard labor, Father Jogues would find a tree, scratch a cross into the bark of a tree, kneel, and pray.
For other enslaved Catholics, Father Jogues administered the sacraments of Baptism and Confession to them. But, he could not celebrate the Mass because his canonical fingers were cut off by his captors. In 1643, Dutch settlers helped Father Joques escape. He returned to France, where he acquired special dispensation to say Mass without his canonical fingers.
However, a few weeks later, Father Jogues missed serving the Catholics among the Mohawks. He traveled back to New France in 1644. From 1644 to 1646, Father Jogues joined the peace talks held for the Huron, Algonquin, Iroquois and the French. In 1646, he was assigned to the position of peace ambassador to the Mohawks and was welcomed back to Ossernenon, where he had been imprisoned just a few years before.
When Father Jogues was obtaining supplies and recruiting missionaries in Canada, he met John Lalande, a young lay Jesuit. Lalande asked to assist the mission. When they arrived at Ossernon though, the Iroquois captured Father Jogues and Lalande and killed them with tomahawk blows. Father Jogues died on October 18, 1646, and the following day Lalande died. Their bodies were left in the Mohawk River.
Father Isaac Jogues, René Goupil and John Lalande were canonized in 1930 as the North American Martyrs, a group including five more saints who were martyred in Canada for their evangelization among the Native Americans. Father Antoine Daniel was killed in 1648 near Québec. After informing the Hurons of nearby enemy tribes, Fathers Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were enslaved in 1649. When they were being tied to crosses and tortured, Father Brébeuf prayed for bravery. Father Lalemant watched Brébeuf’s martyrdom before his own. Fathers Charles Garnier and Noël Chabanel were killed for their faith the same year.
The feast days of the North American Martyrs are celebrated on October 19 in the United States and September 26 in Canada.
At the site of Ossernenon, where Father Isaac Jogues, René Goupil and John Lalande were martyred, the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs stands in their honor. When the site of Ossernon was discovered in Auriesville, New York, Father Joseph Loyzance, S.J., bought the land in 1884. He built a small chapel, naming it after “Our Lady of Martyrs” as the Blessed Mother consoled Christ at the foot of his Cross and martyrs in their last moments. On August 15, 1885, Father Loyzance celebrated the first Mass at the chapel with four thousand pilgrims in attendance, to commemorate the 243rd anniversary of Father Isaac Jogues’s arrival in Ossernon back in 1642.
On November 24, 1946, Pope Pius XII spoke to the Catholics in the United States and Canada about the North American Martyrs over the radio. Interceding to the martyrs, the Holy Father prayed to them,
Through your powerful intercession before the throne of God obtain for them all the grace to share something of the spirit that was yours on earth. May the clergy and religious intensify their interior life of prayer and self-abnegation, for in such soil missionary zeal springs up and grows quickly. May the youth, that American youth always so ready and eager to throw themselves whole-heartedly into every worthy and noble venture, for whom obstacles are but a challenge to their courage, may they seize the torch of faith, lighted by you in the wildernesses, and carry it full-flaming to the ends of the earth, until all men may see and know Jesus Christ, the divine Master who has loved them with an eternal love, whom you, oh blessed martyrs, now contemplate with ineffable joy.
Pope Pius XII proclaimed, “The missionary spirit, they knew it, is not a virtue of supererogation expected of the chosen few. Missionary spirit and Catholic spirit are one and the same.”
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