Fray Pedro de Corpa (c. 1560-1597)

Sept. 1, 2023

By Columbia staff

Sept. 1, 2023

Fray Pedro de Corpa

Franciscan Father Pedro de Corpa believed the key to evangelizing the New World was to imitate Christ. As providence would have it, he was killed on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, martyred for affirming the Christian teaching on marriage.

De Corpa was born in central Spain and joined the Franciscans around 1577. He was ordained a priest and served as a preacher and confessor for several years before joining other friars in 1587 to establish missions in present-day Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

Fray Pedro began his mission work in Spanish Florida, but by 1590 was assigned to the Tolomato mission in Guale, an Indigenous chiefdom in present-day coastal Georgia. He learned the Guale language and is said to have been singularly successful in evangelizing the Native Americans. Alonso de Escobedo, a fellow Franciscan friar, later said of him, “Being a wise and holy man, the love of God burned in his heart.”

Nonetheless, Fray Pedro and other friars struggled to convince the Guales, whose culture allowed polygamy, to accept Christ’s teaching that marriage is a lifetime union between one man and one woman. Trouble arose when Juanillo, an aspiring chief and recent convert, decided to take a second wife; Fray Pedro admonished him and withdrew support for his leadership bid.

Juanillo rallied a war party to eliminate the friars, beginning with the brutal murder of Fray Pedro as he prepared to celebrate Mass on Sept. 14, 1597. Over the next four days, four more Franciscans at local missions were killed for their defense of Christian marriage.

The cause for canonization of Father Pedro de Corpa and companions, known as the Georgia Martyrs, was opened in 1984 by the Diocese of Savannah.

Fray Pedro de Corpa (c. 1560-1597)

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