The Martyrs of La Florida Missions

✝ Fr. Luis Cáncer, OP and Companions

June 26, 1549 (Tampa Bay, FL)
Pacifist and Evangelist

The first Florida martyrs were faithful and courageous Dominicans. Fr. Cáncer was an extraordinary man. He joined the Dominican order with a great desire to be a missionary to the native peoples of the New World. Fr. Cáncer had tremendous success as a missionary in Guatemala. He wrote and shared catechetical songs for the indigenous people after he learned their language. Many became baptized and embraced the Faith. Yet his heart yearned to bring the Gospel to La Florida. After coming ashore in Florida, Fr.Cáncer and his Dominican companions were welcomed by the Tocobaga people, as gifts were exchanged and many natives joined them in prayer. But the welcome did not last. Fr. Cáncer's sacrifice, zeal, and evangelical methods laid the foundation of the faith that would blossom and thrive throughout the missions of the Southeast for the next two centuries.

✝ Fr. Pedro Martínez, SJ 

Sept.-Oct. 1566 (Jacksonville, FL) Scholar & Swordsman

Pedro Martínez was a rowdy youth with a quick wit and fond of swordplay. At the age of twenty, he accompanied friends to an interview as they were considering entering the Jesuit novitiate. The future Fr. Martínez did not go with them to encourage them, but out of curiosity and in fun, however, when they arrived at the Jesuit House, he was so inspired by the Jesuits’ piety that he decided to apply as well! Martínez quickly distinguished himself as a brilliant student, a fine athlete, and a great teacher. While he could have had a comfortable academic career, he longed to be a missionary and begged repeatedly to go on the missions to the New World. In 1566, St. Francis Borgia, the Superior General, appointed Martínez as the head of a missionary effort to Florida. Storms threw his ship off course. Fr.Martínez was welcomed and helped by many native people as he walked from the coast of Georgia carrying a crucifix, facing starvation and trying to reach St. Augustine. But he eventually encountered a tribe allied with the Huguenot settlers who were hostile to his presence. Father Martínez was clubbed to death just before his 33rd birthday.

✝ Fr. Juan Bautista Segura, SJ and Companions

Feb 9 or 10, 1571 (Richmond, VA) Promoter of a New Evangelization

"I will make Jesus Christ known to them and teach them the most essential elements of our holy religion". - Segura letter to Fr. Francis Borgia, SJ December 18, 1569.

In August of 1568 Segura arrived in Florida, and quickly saw that the greatest obstacle to the conversion of the native people was the cruelty and bad example of Spanish soldiers. In letters to his superiors, Segura spoke of his desire to create a new mode of evangelization, where missionaries lived among the Indians without soldiers, and conversions would be won with charity and respect, not guns or intimidation. In February 1571, Segura and eight companions were killed by a local tribe in Virginia's Tidewater area, five months after opening the region's first Catholic mission.

Antonio Inija and Companions

Jan. 26, 1704 (near Tallahassee, FL) Consoled by the Virgin Apalachee leader

Antonio was the Inija (second in authority to the cacique) of the mission of San Luis de Talimali (Tallahassee), the largest Apalachee mission in La Florida, with a population of approximately 8,000 Christian natives. Today, Antonio Inija is the lead martyr of the beatification cause, “Antonio Inija and 57 Companions.” Antonio was chosen as the lead martyr for many reasons: The majority of martyrs in the cause are natives; the choice of Antonio then is a tribute to the extraordinary faith of the people of the Catholic missions. There were many natives who died for the faith whose identity has been lost to history and are not in the beatification cause; the choice of Antonio then expresses gratitude for the many who died for the faith but whose individual stories are unknown today. The faith of the native people is the fruit of the love and sacrifice of the priests who brought the faith to La Florida; the choice of Antonio then perfectly represents the perseverance and holiness of the priests. The Virgin chose to appear to Antonio….and the cause happily reflects her choice.

Fr. Manuel de Mendoza, OFM and Companions

June 3, 1704 (Tallahassee, FL)

Friend of the Poor

Manuel de Mendoza was the youngest of eight children. He was baptized on January 27th, 1646 in the beautiful church Iglesia de Santa Maria in the Castilian town of Medina de Rioseco.  Fr. Mendoza arrived in La Florida when he was thirty-two years old and served for 26 years until his martyrdom on June 3rd, 1704. 

Balthasar Francisco and Companions

July 4, 1704 (Tallahassee, FL)
Honored with a crown

Baltasar was from Los Silos on the Island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. He was an “old soldier” at the time of his martyrdom on the 4th of July, 1704. Franciscan friars finally arrived in Apalachee (Tallahassee) in 1633, after years of invitations from the Apalachee leaders. With the exception of the revolt and martyrdom of 1647, the missions grew and thrived over the next 70 years. 

The English began the brutal attacks on the peaceful missions in January of 1704 and, not even six months later, all would come to a tragic end. On the 4th of July, Baltasar was among the faithful who took the last stand for the presence of the Catholic faith and sacraments in the land. 

Baltasar was tied to an outdoor Station of the Cross. From the cross he preached the faith in the indigenous language to his tormentors. Non-Christian natives had a tradition of honoring courage in fallen warriors by placing a crown of “beaks [of birds] and furs of deer and wild animals” on the head of the courageous deceased.

Before leaving Apalachee to St. Augustine never to return, on July 6th, the faithful returned to Patale to bury the dead. There they found Baltasar Francisco hanging from a cross with a crown on his head.

Timucuan Caciques August 1704 (Madison County, FL) 

Faithful leaders to the end

The native Timucuan people (north central Florida) welcomed missionaries in the late sixteenth century; the faith spread and thrived for over 100 years. Famed Franciscan Fr. Francisco Pareja testified to the depth of the faith of the native peoples, “I have found many Indian men and women who confess and receive communion tearfully and in such a way that they are superior to many Spaniards. I even venture to say from experience that they respond to the mysteries of faith better than Spaniards who never think upon these things.” Like the Apalachee people and missions, the Timucuan missions came to a tragic end.

Fr. Agustín Ponce de León, OFM Sept. 3, 1705 (St. Augustine, FL) First native-born priest-martyr

Agustín Ponce de León was born and baptized in St. Augustine. A descendant of the famous explorer, he grew up as part of a prestigious family in St. Augustine. Agustín chose poverty and followed a call to become a Franciscan friar.

Two Augustines:
Pedro Menéndez first sighted land on August 28th (1565), the feast day of St. Augustine and so named their first settlement after the great saint.  140 years later, another Augustine would bless the land with his blood, freely offering to administer the sacraments to the dying and rescuing the women and children of his mission from captivity.

Fr. Domingo Criado, OFM 1705 (Macon, GA) A good shepherd

"Stripped of his holy habit and experiencing much inhumanity and mockery, [Father Domingo was carried] to their village, where in prolonged martyrdom he served the enemy Indians as their slave; at the end of some months he died."       -  Franciscan friars May 1707   

Don Patricio Hinachuba 

Spring 1706 (St. Augustine FL) 

Great native and Catholic leader

Don Patricio de Hinachuba was the intelligent, wise and brave cacique of the Apalachee mission of Ivitachuco (near Tallahassee). He was the head cacique (chief) in all of Apalachee. He was loyal to the Spanish, but first he was devoted to the Lord, his Catholic faith and his wife and children - and to all the families of his mission. The bilingual and well-educated Don Patricio even wrote a letter to the King of Spain to inform him of a Spanish family’s abuse of the native Christians and asking for his help.

In January of 1704, during the English led attacks on the Catholic indigenous families and their missions, through clever negotiations on the part of Don Patricio with the ruthless Carolina Colonel James Moore, Don Patricio’s mission was spared and the residents of Ivitachuco were safe.   
Don Patricio and his people ultimately relocated to the south of St. Augustine, where, two years later, Don Patricio’s great and heroic life ended in martyrdom.

Fr. Phelipe Orbalaes, OH
Sept. 1, 1712 (Pensacola, FL)
Surgeon, priest, martyr

Dominicans, then Jesuits, then Franciscans…all blessed the lands of the Southeast with their blood. There would be one more religious order to offer that supreme sacrifice: the Order of St. John of God, commonly called the Hospitallers. 

Fr. Phelipe was a surgeon-friar who served at the hospital in Santa Maria de Galve (Pensacola) and may be rightly remembered as the first in the medical profession to die for the faith in our lands. 

Fr. Tiburcio de Osorio, OFM
1712-1715 (Montgomery, AL)
The priest who came back

Fr.Tiburcio, a Franciscan from Havana, served in Apalachee (likely the senior friar at Mission San Luis) during the time of Col Moore’s 1704 brutal assaults on the Catholic missions that killed two of his brother priests and numerous servers, sacristans and friends. Fr.Parga was decapitated and his head posted at the council house; Fr. Mendoza was tricked to come out of his convento, shot, and burned. 

Natives were crucified and burned alive. Many of those not killed were captured and brought to the Carolinas to be sold into slavery. It’s not clear why, but it is no wonder that Fr. Tiburcio returned to Havana in September of that tragic year. It must have been a tremendous relief to get away and go home. It’s not clear how long he stayed in Havana, yet he was definitely back in Florida in February of 1707; Father Tiburcio as chaplain of the Presidio Santa Maria de Galve in Pensacola wrote requesting more supplies for Mass and the Last Rites.
Father Tiburcio was the last martyred priest of historic La Florida.