Sts. Isaac Jogues, John de Brébeuf and Companions

Their story

In the 1600s French Jesuit priests and lay helpers traveled to New France, in what is now Canada and the northern United States, to bring the Gospel to the Huron people and their neighbors. They lived among the native peoples, learned their languages and customs, and endured cold, hunger and danger. Eight of them were killed between 1642 and 1649. They are honored together as the North American Martyrs. Isaac Jogues worked among the Huron. In 1642 he was captured by Mohawk warriors along with the lay missionary René Goupil. René was killed, and Isaac was held as a slave and tortured; several of his fingers were cut off. He escaped with the help of Dutch settlers and returned to France, where the pope gave him special permission to celebrate Mass despite his maimed hands. Yet Isaac chose to go back. In 1646 he returned to the Mohawk country as a peacemaker, and he was killed near Ossernenon, in present-day New York, the village where St. Kateri Tekakwitha would be born ten years later. John de Brébeuf spent more than twenty years among the Huron. He mastered their language, wrote a catechism and composed the Huron Carol, a Christmas hymn still sung today. In 1649 he and Gabriel Lalemant were captured during a war between the Iroquois and the Huron and tortured to death. The other martyrs were Anthony Daniel, Charles Garnier, Noël Chabanel and John de Lalande. They were canonized in 1930.