The Virginia Martyrs

First Martyrs of the Future United States

In September 1570, Father Juan Bautista de Segura, vice-provincial of the Society of Jesus in La Florida, led a small band of missionaries to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. They carried no weapons and brought no soldiers. Their guide was a young native man the Spanish called Don Luis (Paquiquineo), who had been taken to Spain years earlier, baptized, educated, and returned to serve as interpreter and bridge between two worlds. The eight Jesuits established the Ajacán Mission on the Virginia Peninsula, becoming the first Catholic missionaries in that region.

The winter was brutal. Supplies ran short, and Don Luis, struggling between two identities, abandoned the mission to rejoin his people. On February 4, 1571, he returned with a group of warriors and killed all eight missionaries. Only the boy Alonso de Olmos, too young to be considered a threat, was spared. A Spanish rescue expedition the following year recovered Alonso and learned the fate of the martyrs.

These eight men are considered the first Catholic missionaries to die for the faith in what would become the United States, predating the Jamestown settlement by thirty-six years and the arrival of the Pilgrims by nearly half a century. Their cause for beatification and canonization was opened by the Diocese of Richmond in 2002.

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