Beatified missionaries taught faith to Georgia’s natives

On October 31, five Spanish Franciscan missionaries to the native American Guales—in what is now southern Georgia—were beatified by papal legate Cardinal Frank Leo of Toronto. Friars Pedro de Corpa, Blas Rodríguez de Cuacos, Miguel de Añón, Antonio de Badajóz, and Francisco de Veráscola were part of Spain’s extraordinary efforts to evangelize the New World. They were martyred for preaching the sanctity of marriage.

These martyrs remind us that authentic Catholic education is evangelization—even when teaching “secular” subjects, which have the ultimate purpose of cultivating love for God. The great educator-saints were focused on evangelization. Forming young people to follow Christ and turn away from worldly attractions and false ideologies is no less a missionary effort than preaching to foreigners. To paraphrase Bishop Robert Barron’s outstanding defense of evangelization: If I really thought that Catholic education does not serve the Church’s mission of bringing people to Christ, then I would resign my Cardinal Newman Society and teaching posts and get an honest job.

Also, the Georgia martyrs’ beatification is a great opportunity for Catholic educators to teach the long and rich history of Spanish Catholic settlement in America, using suitable resources like those from the Catholic Textbook Project. Georgia’s Franciscan martyrs were killed in 1597, more than a decade before the first English settlement at Jamestown. Thousands of Guale Indians converted and were grateful for the mission, but it was finally destroyed in 1702 by English Governor James Moore of Carolina—a brutal leader who opposed non-Anglican settlers, wiped out most of Florida’s Catholic missions, forced Guale and Spanish Catholics to flee to Cuba, enslaved thousands more natives, and was an early leader in bringing African slaves to America. We should be forthright in teaching about such Protestant-Catholic divisions in American and world history.