St. Isaac Jogues

St. Isaac Jogues (1607–1646) was a French Jesuit priest and missionary, one of the eight North American Martyrs. Born at Orléans, France, on January 10, 1607, he entered the Society of Jesus at seventeen and volunteered for the missions of New France, arriving in 1636. For six years he labored among the Huron people around the Great Lakes, learning their language and sharing the hardships of their life while announcing the Gospel. In 1642, while returning from Quebec with supplies, Jogues was captured by a Mohawk war party along with his lay companion René Goupil. He endured savage torture: he was beaten, burned, and mutilated, several of his fingers being cut or chewed off, and he watched Goupil killed for making the sign of the cross over a child. Held as a slave for some thirteen months at the village of Ossernenon, he continued quietly to pray, to baptize the dying, and to minister to fellow captives, until Dutch traders at Fort Orange (present-day Albany) helped him escape to Europe. In France he was received as a living martyr. Because Church law then required unmutilated hands for celebrating Mass, Pope Urban VIII granted him a special dispensation, reportedly remarking that it would be shameful for a martyr of Christ not to drink the Blood of Christ. Rather than remain in safety, Jogues asked to return to the missions, and in 1644 he sailed again for New France. In 1646 he traveled to Ossernenon as a peace envoy to the Mohawk — the very place of his captivity. When sickness and crop failure struck the village, some of the Mohawk blamed the missionary's presence, accusing him of sorcery. On October 18, 1646, Isaac Jogues was struck down with a tomahawk and beheaded; his young companion Jean de la Lande was killed the next day. Jogues was canonized on June 29, 1930, by Pope Pius XI together with Jean de Brébeuf and their companions, and the group was later named patrons of North America. Their memorial in the United States is kept on October 19. Pilgrims honor St. Isaac Jogues at the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, New York, near the site of his martyrdom, and at the Martyrs' Shrine in Midland, Ontario.