The Georgia Martyrs

The Atlanta paper takes note, thanks to an archaeological discovery.

The Rev. Conrad Harkins is curious, too. For more than a decade, he has worked tirelessly to see that five Spanish missionaries killed by Indians on the Georgia coast in 1597 are recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as martyrs and, perhaps in time, as saints.

Are these the relics of a prospective saint, or just the bones of another sinner? Time — along with some forensic investigation, a little DNA analysis and some luck — may tell.

A half-century after the skull was unearthed at the site of a former Spanish mission near Darien, and 20 years after the Diocese of Savannah proposed beatification for the "Georgia martyrs," science and religion have found a common bond in their curiosity about the weathered remains.

"Without any living relatives, there is little chance of being very definitive about the identity," says Stojanowski. "But there are some tests that can narrow the possibilities."

That prospect has persuaded Harkins, historian at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, and the official "vice postulator" for the Cause of the Georgia Martyrs, to spend a little of the faithful's money on a scientific long shot.

Via Michael

Writer and Savannah resident Paul Thigpen is a force behind "The Friends of the Georgia Martyrs" and in making the Catholic history of that region more known in general.