Within fifteen years of the friars’ martyrdom, their story began to appear in literary and religious works across Europe, and the memory of their heroic witness to the Gospel was kept alive in their hometowns and within the Franciscan order. A letter from the Definitorium of the Custody of Santa Elena (a Franciscan governing body) to King Philip III dated October 16, 1612 confirmed that the friars were martyrs – killed “because we were not permitting the Christian married men to have more than one woman for each married man....This is the reason that the Indians gave and [still] give today.”

And yet…the opening of the Cause for their beatification and canonization doesn’t happen for over 350 years. Why? Politics and geography, mostly. With the arrival of General James Oglethorpe in 1733, the English colony of Georgia was founded as a buffer between the English in the Carolinas and Spanish Florida. Lawyers, slaves, alcohol, and Catholics were not permitted in the new colony. Thirty years later, the rule of Florida was ultimately turned over to the British, and the surviving Christian Natives fled with the Spanish to Cuba. With no descendants to keep traditions alive, the Spanish (and Catholic) history of the area began to be erased from memory. Even today, Catholics account for just 3% of the total population in the Diocese of Savannah.