Suggest an Edit — Martyrs of Natal

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Biography

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The Martyrs of Natal, also called the Martyrs of Cunhaú and Uruaçu, are a group of thirty Roman Catholics killed in 1645 in the captaincy of Rio Grande do Norte in northeastern Brazil, then under Portuguese rule but partly occupied by the Dutch. The killings took place against the background of the Dutch West India Company's control of much of the northeast and the outbreak of a Catholic Portuguese-Brazilian revolt against that occupation. The group comprised two priests and twenty-eight lay faithful, among them men, women, and young people. The Holy See later recognized that they had been put to death in hatred of the Catholic faith.

On 16 July 1645 an armed party of Dutch soldiers and indigenous allies attacked the chapel of Our Lady of the Candles at the Cunhaú sugar estate, in the present-day municipality of Canguaretama, while Sunday Mass was being celebrated. The priest André de Soveral, who served the parish, and the layman Domingos Carvalho were murdered together with many other worshippers; reports from the period speak of a large number of dead, the chapel having been shut so that those inside could not escape. André de Soveral is generally described as a native of the captaincy of São Vicente, born in the later sixteenth century. Only he and Domingos Carvalho from this massacre were included among the thirty later canonized, though they stand for a larger company of victims.

A second massacre followed on 3 October 1645 beside the Uruaçu River, in what is now São Gonçalo do Amarante, near Natal. Ambrósio Francisco Ferro, the priest of Natal, and a group of lay Catholics who had been taken prisoner were tortured and killed. Tradition especially remembers the layman Mateus Moreira, said to have had his heart torn out while invoking the Blessed Sacrament. Other companions recorded in the cause include Antônio Vilela, Antônio Baracho, and further lay men, women, and children, some of whom are known only by their kinship to fellow victims rather than by an individual given name.

Local veneration of the dead of Cunhaú and Uruaçu persisted in Rio Grande do Norte for centuries. Pope John Paul II beatified André de Soveral and his twenty-nine companions on 5 March 2000. Pope Francis canonized the thirty martyrs on 15 October 2017 in Saint Peter's Square. Their memorial is celebrated on 3 October. Shrines mark both places of martyrdom, and they are honored as protomartyrs of Brazil and as patrons of the state of Rio Grande do Norte.

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