Brazil, Four Hundred Years Ago

To hear this story, we need to travel far back in time, to the Brazil of almost four hundred years ago. There were no big cities then like the ones we know today. Along the northeastern coast stood the engenhos, huge plantations where sugarcane was grown and sugar was made, and around them lived families of Portuguese settlers and many indigenous peoples. Nearly every plantation had its own chapel, and that was where life happened: the baptisms, the weddings, the Sunday Mass.

But those were also times of war. In 1630, soldiers from Holland invaded Pernambuco and, little by little, took over much of the Northeast, including the lands of Rio Grande, where the state of Rio Grande do Norte lies today. The Dutch followed another religion and had no love for the Catholic faith. As the years went by, life for the Catholics of those lands grew harder and more dangerous.

Father André

Long before all that, around the year 1572, a boy named André de Soveral had been born in São Vicente, on the coast of São Paulo. When he grew up, André decided to give his life to God: at twenty-one he joined the Jesuit priests, studied Latin and theology, and also learned the language of the Potiguara people, so that he could talk with them and bring them the Gospel.

After years as a missionary, André became the priest of the people of Cunhaú, a valley of sugar plantations in the south of Rio Grande, where he arrived around 1614. There he spent decades doing what a good shepherd does: he baptized the children, visited the sick, taught the catechism, celebrated Mass. He was already a gray-haired man, known and loved by everyone, when the darkest days arrived.

The Notice on the Chapel Door

In July of 1645, a man named Jacob Rabe appeared in Cunhaú, a German soldier in the service of the Dutch. He claimed to carry important orders from the Dutch government in Recife, and he had a notice nailed to the chapel door: on Sunday, after Mass, all the residents were to stay and hear these orders read aloud.

On Sunday, July 16, the people of the valley came to Mass the way they always came: whole families, empty-handed, without a single weapon. Anyone carrying a walking staff left it outside, at the entrance of the chapel of Our Lady of the Candles. Inside, Father André de Soveral began to celebrate Mass before some seventy faithful.

That was when Jacob Rabe showed what he had truly come to do. At his signal, the chapel doors were shut, and the soldiers and warriors he had brought fell upon the defenseless people.

That Sunday at Cunhaú

Father André understood, in an instant, that no one would leave that chapel alive. He did not scream and he did not run. With the steady voice of a man who had spent his whole life trusting God, he turned to his people and invited them to pray, asking forgiveness for their sins and placing everything in the Lord's hands.

— My children, let us ask God's forgiveness — he said. — We are going to meet the Father.

And so, praying, the old priest died together with his people on that Sunday morning. Among the faithful was a farmer named Domingos de Carvalho, who also stood firm in the faith to the very end. The chapel of Cunhaú, which had seen so many baptisms and weddings, became that day the doorway to heaven for dozens of martyrs.

The Shepherd of Natal

News of what had happened at Cunhaú spread through Rio Grande and filled everyone with fear. Near the town of Natal lived another priest, Father Ambrósio Francisco Ferro, a Portuguese man who was pastor of the people there. He knew the danger he was in, for the priests were hunted above all others. He could have fled far away, but he chose to stay: a shepherd does not abandon his flock when the wolf is at the door.

Months later, the people of the region were captured by Jacob Rabe, who now came with soldiers and with warriors led by a chief named Antônio Paraopaba. On October 3, 1645, on the banks of the river, at a place called Uruaçu, Father Ambrósio and dozens of the faithful were put to death for the faith they refused to abandon. Among them were men, women, and even children, simple people whose names have almost all been lost, but whom God knows one by one.

Praised Be the Blessed Sacrament

Among the martyrs of Uruaçu was a young man named Mateus Moreira. He was not a priest or an important man: he was a layman, an ordinary Christian, like so many who fill the pews of a church. Mortally wounded, with only a last thread of life left in him, Mateus gathered what strength he had and said aloud the words Catholics of that time used to greet Jesus in the Eucharist:

— Praised be the Blessed Sacrament!

Those were his last words. Mateus died praising Jesus hidden in the consecrated bread, the same Jesus he had received so many times in Communion. And so, to this day, when those words are spoken in the churches of Brazil, they carry an echo of that afternoon: the voice of a martyr who loved the Eucharist more than his own life.

The First Saints of Brazil

The years passed, the Dutch were driven out of Brazil at last, and the people of Rio Grande do Norte never forgot their martyrs. Generation after generation, grandparents told grandchildren the story of that Sunday at Cunhaú and that afternoon at Uruaçu. For centuries the Church studied everything with great care, to be certain that those people had truly died for the faith.

On March 5 of the year 2000, in Rome, Pope John Paul II declared blessed Father André de Soveral, Father Ambrósio Francisco Ferro, the layman Mateus Moreira, and their twenty-seven companions. And on October 15, 2017, in Saint Peter's Square, before a crowd waving Brazilian flags, Pope Francis declared them saints. They are the protomartyrs of Brazil, which means the first martyrs of that land, and their feast is kept every year on October 3.