Saints John de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues and Companions

Saints John de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, and their six companions were French missionaries who gave their lives between 1642 and 1649 while proclaiming the Gospel to the native peoples of North America. Six were Jesuit priests, and two were helpers of their mission. The Church commemorates them together on October 19.

The priests were John de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, Gabriel Lalemant, Anthony Daniel, Charles Garnier, and Noël Chabanel. René Goupil and John de La Lande were not ordained: as laymen they freely gave themselves to the service of the Fathers in New France, that is, in what was then French Canada. Goupil was skilled in surgery and cared for the sick. The papal acts of beatification and canonization list both of them as coadjutor brothers of the Society of Jesus.

John de Brébeuf was born on March 25, 1593, in Normandy and entered the Jesuits in 1617. In 1626 he went to live among the Hurons and, with interruptions, spent about fifteen years with them. He learned their language, wrote books in it, and compiled dictionaries that other missionaries used. The bull of canonization calls him the first apostle of that people.

Isaac Jogues, born in 1607 in Orléans, came to Canada in 1636. In August 1642 his party was attacked by the Iroquois. He could have avoided captivity, but he gave himself into their hands so that the captured Christians would not be left without a priest. He and René Goupil were tortured and their hands were mutilated. In captivity Goupil made his religious vows before Jogues, and on September 29, 1642, he was killed with a blow of an ax for having traced the sign of the cross on a child’s forehead.

After more than a year of captivity Jogues managed to escape and returned to France. Pope Urban VIII allowed him to celebrate Mass despite his mutilated hands. The missionary went back to Canada, went to his former torturers as an envoy of peace, and soon afterward set out to them again, with John de La Lande, to preach the faith to them. On October 18, 1646, he was killed with an ax in the village of Ossernenon, in what is now the state of New York. The next day La Lande was killed there.

The others died in the missions among the Hurons, in what is now the Canadian province of Ontario, when Iroquois raids were laying waste to those lands. Anthony Daniel fell on July 4, 1648, at the door of the church, covering the flight of the faithful. John de Brébeuf was tortured to death on March 16, 1649, and Gabriel Lalemant a day later. Charles Garnier died on December 7, 1649, administering baptism and absolution to the very end. The next day Noël Chabanel was killed by a Huron who had abandoned the faith.

Pope Pius XI beatified the eight martyrs on June 21, 1925, and on June 29, 1930, declared them saints, calling them the first martyrs of North America. In 1940 Pius XII declared them patrons of Canada. In 1984 John Paul II prayed at their shrine in Midland, Canada, and recalled that John de Brébeuf dreamed of a Church fully Catholic and fully Huron as well.