Julie Baaki cried tears of joy and gratitude when she heard the news. 

On Jan. 27, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) designated Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine in Auriesville, New York, as a national shrine. The moment fulfilled years of service to promoting the Christian witness of eight 17th-century Jesuit missionaries, including Sts. René Goupil, Isaac Jogues and Jean de Lalande, who were killed by the Mohawk tribe. Once a Mohawk village of Osserenon, the location is also the birthplace of St. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680), a Mohawk who became the first canonized North American Indigenous woman.

“The formal national shrine recognition is important and significant because it highlights the task of the North American Martyrs — those first courageous Jesuit missionaries,” Baaki, who since the end of 2015 has served as the shrine’s executive director, told the Register. “To bring the Gospel, the love of Jesus, to America is an ongoing mission, perhaps more needed now than ever.”

Traditionally known as the National Shrine of North American Martyrs after the Jesuit missionaries’ canonization in 1930, the site had been considered a national shrine. Year after year, thousands of pilgrims have journeyed to Auriesville to soak in the rich history and devote themselves to prayer, seeking the saints’ intercession.

However, under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, only the USCCB could formally recognize locations as “national.” For years, the Shrine to Friends of Our Lady of Martyrs — the board who has overseen the shrine’s operations since 2017 — assumed the site had received an official designation; but after researching the issue, no specific canonical status had been granted. Therefore, in August 2024, the board submitted the proper paperwork; and within months, the USCCB bestowed the “national” designation.  

To Baaki, the resolved matter is not only a blessing, but she hopes it ignites more interest in the shrine, the martyrs and St. Kateri. 

“When you are walking on ground that was sanctified with the blood of the martyrs you can feel it in your heart,” she told the Register. “Being on what most consider the holiest ground in North America is a blessing that is not lost on us, or any of our staff.”

 

The Blood of Martyrs

The first French Jesuits came to North America in 1611, celebrating the “first known Mass on American soil” near the Kennebec River in Maine, according to the religious order’s website. In the ensuing decades, more French missionaries were sent to modern-day New York, Canada and the Great Lakes. Father Jogues was one of them. He specifically requested the assignment, reaching Quebec shortly after his ordination in 1636. 

Initially, his work flourished, especially among the Hurons, who were pitted in a “contentious fur trade” war against the Iroquois Confederacy — a multi-tribe alliance that included the Mohawks. Goupil, meanwhile, arrived two years later, where he served at a Quebec hospital and then as a donné (or lay assistant) to the missionaries. Within these years, Father Jogues and Goupil met and then began collaborating. 

However, in 1642, while traveling between Canadian missions on the St. Lawrence River, Father Jogues and Brother René were captured in an Iroquois raid and then brought to Osserenon. Both suffered “gruesome torture and were enslaved.” 

On Sept. 29, after two months of imprisonment, Goupil was killed near the village gates after blessing a child. Father Jogues’ fate did not end so quickly; he endured a year of “hard labor, starvation and exposure,” and the Mohawks severed his canonical fingers (how a priest gestures at Mass, standing and joining his thumb and index finger in a circle, and holding the other fingers straight, away from the palm). Still, due to his “docility,” the Jesuit was allowed to minister to other Catholic captives throughout the Mohawk Valley, although he could not celebrate the Mass due to the missing appendages (of which, he later received a special dispensation from the Vatican).

In 1643, with the help of Dutch settlers in Albany, Father Jogues made a harrowing escape and eventually returned to France. Yet, despite the abuse inflicted against him, Father Jogues requested to return to North America, which was granted. By 1644, he was back in Canada. 

Two years later, the Jesuits and Iroquois Confederacy signed a peace treaty. As an ambassador, Father Jogues played a critical role in securing peace and he was permitted to construct a mission in Osserenon. But his subsequent trip, with Lalande — also a lay brother — proved less tranquil. Both men were blamed for failed crops; in retribution, the Mohawks beheaded Father Jogues and Lalande on Oct. 18-19, 1646, respectively. 

A decade later, in 1656, Kateri was born in Osserenon to a Catholic Algonquin and a Mohawk pagan chief. At 4 years old, she survived a smallpox epidemic, which left her scarred and nearly blind. However, her parents and brother were less fortunate, dying from the disease. 

In 1666, the young girl witnessed French soldiers raze her village, which forced the Mohawks into an “uneasy peace” with them. As a condition, the Mohawks allowed French Jesuits to proselytize; Kateri greatly admired the missionaries and eventually converted under the tutelage of Father Jacques de Lamberville in 1676. Vowing a life of chastity, Kateri was ostracized and “endured social and emotional persecution.” The environment became so hostile, she fled for her own safety, traveling 200 miles to a Christian native village near Montreal. 

Until her death at 24 years old in 1680, the “Lily of the Mohawks” dedicated her life to Christ through prayer, penance, self-mortification and charity. After she died, witnesses attested that her facial scars disappeared, and soon apparitions were reported. More than 300 years later, Kateri was canonized in 2012. 

Though Osserenon was vital in Jesuit and Church history, it wasn’t a formal pilgrimage site until 1884, when Jesuit Father Joseph Loyzance purchased 10 acres of farmland in Auriesville, built a chapel, and called it “Our Lady of Martyrs.” The following year, on Aug. 15, 1885, 4,000 pilgrims attended the site’s first Mass. Since then, the shrine has blossomed into what it is today, with the largest construction being the 3,500-seat Coliseum Church, completed in 1931.   

 

Holy Ground

For many pilgrims, the shrine has proven vital to not only conversions, but vocations. This was certainly true for Bishop Edward Scharfenberger of the Diocese of Albany, New York, who has credited the shrine for being “a big part of [his] own vocational development,” he told the Register. 

As a child, his father — who had an interest in Native American history — took the family to Auriesville. Even then, the future bishop had been “very impressed” by the Jesuit missionaries’ martyrdom and St. Kateri’s holiness. 

“They weren’t all priests, but they left the comfort of French culture, which, at the time, was pretty sophisticated,” Bishop Scharfenberger told the Register. “They left their creature comforts and made a treacherous journey across the sea, not knowing what they would encounter in order to bring the joy of the Gospel to the Indigenous people.”

Coincidentally (or providentially), more than 40 years after his ordination in 1973, Bishop Scharfenberger has served as chairman for the Friends of Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine after the group obtained the property from the Jesuits in 2017. 

Though decades have passed since his first visit, the shrine has retained its “rustic” and “natural” charm, which appeals to the thousands of pilgrims who visit per year, Bishop Scharfenberger said. Among the Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine’s grounds are the original 1885 chapel, the Kateri Chapel, the Saints of Auriesville Museum, and the preserved ravine where Father Jogues buried Goupil. 

 

Inspired to Volunteer

Baaki, meanwhile, first began visiting the shrine when her family moved into the area in 2013. She had already heard of the North American Martyrs and St. Kateri and became inspired to volunteer, which eventually led to her current role. Her time at the shrine has been a rewarding experience, witnessing “new miracles” throughout the years, thus increasing her own devotion to the martyrs and St. Kateri.

“We frequently hear stories from pilgrims of how specific prayers have been answered after being on these holy grounds,” Baaki told the Register. “It is incredibly beautiful how the sacrifice and the courage and the love of the martyrs and St. Kateri is still bringing thousands closer to Our Lord and Our Lady and they continue to intercede for so many.”

Moreover, walking on the “holy ground” where the martyrs and St. Kateri once lived and suffered for the faith “compels you to constantly evaluate how you are living your life and determine if it is consistent with how God wants us to be living,” Baaki added. 

Similarly, Mary Beth — a pilgrim who left a testimonial — remarked that the grounds “surpassed” her expectations, writing, “What happened here is very well documented, and the grounds give honor to the saints and martyrs who gave their life for Christ here.” She added the shrine is “perfect for mediation and contemplating the sufferings of Christ, the Blessed Mother and saints.”

Though the shrine receives pilgrims from Catholic schools, New York City and, indeed, all over the world, it has become a hub for the Catholic Church in New York state. In 2023, 8,000 people journeyed to the shrine and participated in festivities aligned with the National Eucharistic Revival: a grassroots movement that began in 2022 by the USCCB to recatechize U.S. Catholics on the Real Presence.

Ultimately, Bishop Scharfenberger hopes the shrine’s official national designation by the USCCB will attract even more interest, telling the Register that he is “hopeful that God will use this — as we know he will — as an occasion to draw more people” to learn about the heroic lives of the North American martyrs and St. Kateri.

LEARN MORE

While celebratory plans are still in development, the National Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs will reopen May 3 and close Oct. 19, 2025: the feast day of the North American Martyrs. It will also host several novenas to St. Kateri (July 6-14) and then the martyrs (Oct. 11-19).