In the 249-year history of the United States, and the 532-year history of European contact with what is now the United States, there have been 25 associated individuals beatified or canonized by the Catholic Church.
It is by now well-known that none of them are Black. It is also true that none were American martyrs—in the sense that they were killed long before there was a United States. The two exceptions died outside of America: Blesseds Stanley Rother and the De La Salle Brother James Miller.
A conundrum that has long rung in my head, though, is how it could be that no Black Catholics in half a millennium of New World colonization have ever sacrificed their lives for their faith. Given the ravages of slavery, the attendant resistance from Black Catholics, and the larger struggle for freedom of Black bodies and souls, it seems absurd to think that no Black Catholic has ever been martyred in the Western Hemisphere.
It must be remembered, of course, that what is now considered “America” has not always been the United States. Moreover, many Black Catholics who lived in these parts were not African Americans in any modern sense of the word, which colors our understanding—or neglect—of their memory.
Take, for example, Venerable Rafael Cordero, an Black man who is widely regarded as the father of public education in his native Puerto Rico. A vaunted agitator for the rights of children on the island, he was also noted as an anti-slavery advocate, being descended himself from enslaved Boricuas. It was on the island, of course, that Africans were first brought to what is now the United States, in the early 16th century.
Even so, Cordero is rarely considered among the Black Catholics on the path to sainthood in the United States, with the “Saintly Seven” including only those who were born or died in the United States. The “Maestro” Rafael, as he is known, died in 1868—three decades before the annexation of Puerto Rico. He also died of natural causes and by that token is not considered a martyr.
This did not satisfy me, however, and I continued to search.
Nate Tinner-Williams
Venerable Rafael's sister was also highly influential in Puerto Rico, but she has not had a sainthood cause introduced.
As early as the 1920s, attempts have been made to catalog all American Catholic martyrs, most of them with broad definitions of who is an “American.” A concurrent movement sought for the mass beatification of such individuals, as has been done for countries like China, South Korea, Vietnam, England, and Japan.
The cause, championed by Archbishop John Mark Gannon of Erie, was interrupted by World War II and later ruled out by the Vatican, which recommended separate causes. Meanwhile, texts like “An American Martyrology” from Fr Frederick George Holweck and the Franciscan priest Marion Habig’s “Heroes of the Cross” included up to 116 American martyrs. But among that number, and the numerous other Catholic victims of persecution, were any of African descent?
The first candidate to consider is one Estevanico (“Little Esteban”), an enslaved Afro-Spanish Catholic who joined the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez on an expedition in 1528, becoming the first Black person to set foot in mainland America. His journey included landings in what are now St. Petersburg Florida, and Galveston, Texas, and inland treks through New Mexico, Arizona, and northern Mexico. A second expedition, with the Franciscan friar Fray Marcos de Niza, brought him back to the Southwest, where he is believed to have been killed in 1539 by warriors of the Zuni tribe in modern-day northwest New Mexico.
Next is an unnamed member of the Spanish expedition of the conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, who explored Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas in the early 1540s. Among his traveling partners was the famed Franciscan missionary Juan de Padilla and a number of Black Catholics, including one described as another priest of the Order of Friars Minor. Like Padilla, he is believed to have been cut down by members of a local Indigenous community, possibly of the Wichita tribe.
Nate Tinner-Williams
Roughly a decade later, the Spanish Dominican missionary Fr Hernando Mendez was among a group of fellow friars killed while traveling in northern Texas. Shipwrecked off the Gulf of Mexico, hundreds of missionaries and settlers had attempted to make their way back to Mexico by foot, which brought them into conflict with local Indigenous residents. According to Bishop David Arias Pérez’s 2012 book “The Martyrs of the United States,” Mendez was among the last survivors of repeated attacks and received assistance from a Black Christian woman, possibly another member of the original expedition party. She was herself murdered by the Karankawa people while foraging for food.
Though they will rarely appear in any martyrology, the next candidates to consider are the leaders of various revolts during the era of Catholic slavery in the colonial and early constitutional era of the United States. Jemmy Cato of the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739, Charles Deslondes of the 1811 German Coast uprising in Louisiana, and Marcos Xiorro of the 1821 revolt in Puerto Rico are a few that come to mind. Their witness to a faith seeking freedom led directly to their death at the hands of their enslavers.
Just a few years after the rebellion in South Carolina, a group of enslaved Black Catholics in British New York were accused of plotting to overthrow the ruling order in 1741. The victims claimed to be subjects of the Catholic king in Spain rather than the Protestant authorities in Manhattan, leading to their conviction in a kangaroo court and summary execution days later. Burned at the stake, Juan de Silva was recorded as praying and kissing a crucifix before his death alongside his companions Pablo Ventura “Powlis” Angel, Antonio “Tony” de St. Bendito, Antonio de la Cruz, Francis, and Augustine Gutierrez.
Nate Tinner-Williams
It is believed that one fate the English feared was a mass revolt of the enslaved in an attempt to commandeer vessels and escape New York to Florida. There, the Spanish maintained a colony under the Catholic crown, which offered freedom to formerly enslaved refugees who agreed to join the Spanish military and convert to the Roman faith. Their home base was St. Augustine Florida, where Black Catholics—free and enslaved—had arrived with Spanish settlers in 1565.
By 1738, the Black community of St. Augustine had grown to the point that the local governor ordered the resettled fugitives to man a new base north of the city, founding Fort Mose in 1738. Here, they were tasked with staving off attacks from British Carolina to the north, eventually succumbing to a major invasion in May 1740. During these and other raids, Afro-Spanish Floridians were killed by the British, at least partially in hatred of the Catholic faith. A sainthood cause for the Native American and White Catholics killed in Spanish Florida was introduced in 2015, but its list of 58 individuals includes no one Black.
It is truly a familiar tune. Black history set aside, deprioritized, or even erased. In the Catholic world, the struggle is the same and the struggle continues. Without a history—a full and accurate one—the people lost heart. They lose themselves. If you are told, however implicitly, that your forebears did nothing and were nothing, you eventually start to believe it. For far too long, the Black Catholic legacy of faith has been watered down such that many today have indeed given up on the Church that so willfully ignores their existence.
In light of the historical figures highlighted here, however, whose blood also watered the Catholic faith in America as we know it, we should remember their work, their lives, and their deaths. Moreover, as we approach Black Catholic History Month this year, we should remember their names—out loud and in public.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
