Saint René Goupil

He came from Anjou, in western France; jesuits.global names his town as Angers. ¹²⁴ The sources do not agree on the year. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives 1607, jesuits.global 1608, and Vatican News 1609. ¹³⁴

Jogues wrote that "in the bloom of his youth" he asked to be received into the Jesuit novitiate at Paris and stayed there some months, but that his "bodily indispositions" took from him the happiness of consecrating himself to God in religious life, which he strongly desired. ² Jesuits.global says he left because of ill health and studied surgery. ⁴

When his health improved, Jogues says, he went to New France to serve the Society there, since he could not belong to it in France. ² The encyclopedia says he volunteered to serve it without pay, as a donné. ¹

He put himself entirely under the superior of the mission, who for two whole years gave him, in Jogues's words, "the meanest offices about the house". ² He was also given the care of the sick and wounded at the hospital, which Jogues says he did "with as much skill—for he understood surgery well—as with affection and love, continually seeing Our Lord in their persons." ² The encyclopedia calls it two years as a surgeon in the hospitals of Quebec. ¹

In July 1642 Jogues and his companions came down from the Huron country, and they asked the superior, Father Vimont, to let them take Goupil back with them, "because the Hurons had great need of a Surgeon". ² Jogues says he could not describe the young man's joy, though Goupil knew the dangers of the river. ²

Vatican News gives the background: the Iroquois Confederacy was at war with the Hurons and regarded the French missionaries as allies of their enemies. ³ The party left Three Rivers on August 1, and in Jogues's account they met an Iroquois war party the next day. ² The encyclopedia's article on Jogues dates the capture to August 3. ⁵ Most of the Hurons fled into the woods, and the Frenchmen were taken. ²

Jogues recorded what Goupil said as soon as he saw that he was a prisoner: "O my father, God be blessed; he has permitted it, he has willed it,— his holy will be done. I love it, I desire it, I cherish it, I embrace it with all the strength of my heart." ² While the warriors chased the others, Jogues heard his confession and absolved him. ² When they came back they tore out the prisoners' nails and crushed their fingers. ¹²

The journey into the Mohawk country took thirteen days, the encyclopedia says, with heat, hunger and festering wounds, and halfway a band of two hundred warriors beat the prisoners almost to death. ¹²

On the road, Jogues writes, Goupil told him that he had always wanted to consecrate himself to God by the vows of religion in the Society, and asked to make them now, in Jogues's presence. "This being granted to him, he uttered the vows with much devotion." ² The encyclopedia records the same vows. ¹

Wounded as he was, he dressed the wounds of others, the prisoners and the captors alike, and he opened a vein for a sick Iroquois, "with as much charity as if he had done it to persons very friendly." ² When the captors told Jogues to paddle, he refused, "being proud even in death," as he put it; Goupil paddled at once when they told him to, and then asked Jogues's pardon when he saw his example being used against him. ²

He could have escaped. Jogues says he suggested it more than once, since they were loosely guarded, but Goupil would not go. ¹²

They were taken to Ossernenon, a Mohawk village on the Mohawk River at what is now Auriesville, New York. ¹³⁵ At the first village, Jogues writes, Goupil fell under the blows of clubs and iron rods and was carried "half dead" onto the scaffold in the middle of the village, so bruised that nothing of his face could be seen but the whites of his eyes. ² Jogues applied to him the prophecy of Isaiah, quoting it in Latin: "Vidimus eum quasi leprosum", we have seen him as a leper, with no beauty or comeliness. ¹²

They cut off his right thumb at the first joint, Jogues says, while he kept repeating "Jesus, Mary, Joseph." ² For six days the prisoners were exposed to anyone who wished to hurt them, and his whole chest was burned by coals that boys threw on them at night. ² When the prisoners were spared, he fell ill, and Jogues, whose own fingers were mutilated, could do nothing for him. ²

He prayed almost constantly in the cabin where he lived, which displeased an old man there. ² One day, Jogues writes, he took off his cap, put it on the head of a child of three or four, and made a large sign of the cross over the child. ² The old man told a young man of the cabin, who was about to leave for war, to kill him. ² The encyclopedia gives the same reason: unable to teach his captors the faith, he taught the children to make the sign of the cross, and "this was the cause of his death." ¹

About six weeks after they arrived, the two had gone outside the village to pray when two young men came and told them to go back. Jogues sensed what was coming and said, "My dearest brother, let us commend ourselves to Our Lord and to our good mother the blessed Virgin; these people have some evil design, as I think." ² They walked back saying the rosary and had finished four decades when, near the gate of the village, one of the two drew a hatchet from under his blanket and struck Goupil on the head. ²

He fell face down, saying the name of Jesus; the two had often reminded each other that the name should end both their voices and their lives. ¹² Jogues knelt to receive the next blow himself, and when it did not come he ran to Goupil and gave him absolution before they killed him with two more blows. ² Jogues dates it to the feast of Saint Michael, September 29; the encyclopedia gives September 23. ¹²

Children dragged the body into a stream below the village. Jogues hid it under stones to bury it later, but it was taken, and only the next spring did he find the skull and some bones in a wood nearby. He buried them, and kissed them "as the bones of a martyr of Jesus Christ." ²

Jogues wrote this account for his superior in 1646, and in it he called Goupil "this Angel in innocence, and this Martyr of Jesus Christ", who "gave his life for him who had given him his." ² He explained why he used the word martyr: not only because Goupil was killed by enemies of the faith while serving his neighbor, "but especially because he was killed on account of prayer, and notably for the sake of the holy Cross." ² The child's mother and the old man both told Jogues afterward that the sign of the cross was the reason. ²

The encyclopedia calls him the first of the order in the Canadian missions to suffer martyrdom; jesuits.global, the first of the eight North American Martyrs to be killed. ¹⁴ Vatican News, which calls him a deaf lay brother, adds that Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint, was born in the same village ten years later. ³ Pope Pius XI canonized him with Jogues, Brébeuf and five others on June 29, 1930. ³⁵

Jesuits.global says he "is now considered the patron saint of physician anesthetists". ⁴ It fits the surgeon of Quebec, who on the way to his death opened a vein for one of his captors. ²

With the other North American Martyrs he is also a secondary patron of Canada: the Canadian bishops' calendar keeps "Sts. Jean de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs" as "Secondary Patrons of Canada". ⁸

The Roman Martyrology enters Saint René Goupil on September 29, the day of his death, as the physician and companion of Saint Isaac Jogues who was killed by a pagan with the blow of an axe; it places Ossernenon "in territorio canadese", in Canadian territory. ⁶

In the United States he is kept on October 19 with the other North American Martyrs, under the title "Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs", which New Advent calls their collective feast day. ⁵⁷ Canada keeps the same martyrs on September 26, with the rank of a feast. ⁸

He wanted to be a Jesuit and his health would not let him. ²⁴ He went to Canada anyway and did what he was given, two years of the lowest work in the house and the care of the sick, and Jogues says he saw Christ in the patients. ² The vows came only on the road into captivity, made to the one priest who was there to hear them. ²

The first thing he said as a prisoner was that he loved the will of God that had allowed it. ² He went on practicing his trade on the people who were hurting him, and paddled when he was told to. ² He was offered chances to run and did not take them. ¹²

He was killed for a small gesture: a cap set on a child's head and a sign of the cross. ¹² Jogues, who was more careful, admitted that he would not have done it, and called it a simplicity that those "more prudent than he, according to the flesh" would not have shown. ²

Nothing about it was gentle. His body was dragged into a stream and lost, and Jogues found only bones the next spring. ² He kissed them anyway, and years later wrote the whole of it down for his superior, apologizing for his haste. ²