https://www.catholic-saints-and-feasts.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lu0Gq38gzwAtgmwcsz1io
Amazon books, audible, and kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B7SGTYKG?binding=paperback&ref=dbs_m_mng_rwt_sft_tpbk_tkin

Life is a gift replete with countless gifts

It’s 1542, and the Spanish Franciscan Juan de Padilla, a rugged ex-soldier, is trekking through the high, waving prairie grasses of the buffalo plains of North America at the head of a small band of explorers. Suddenly, an Indian war party of the Kansas people appears on the low horizon. The Spaniards scatter into the tall grasses for cover. But Father Padilla stays, slowly kneels in the moist soil, bows his head in prayer, and doesn’t move an inch. The war party approaches, and as the Spaniards watch from afar, they stretch their bows and fill Father Padilla’s torso with a volley of arrows. He is the first North American martyr. There are no dissenting Protestants anywhere in sight.

It’s 1570, and five Spanish Jesuits establish a mission, with chapel and school, to evangelize Indians in the future state of Virginia. In February of 1571, all the Jesuits are hacked to death with the very axes they had given to the Indians for chopping wood. A relief boat arriving a few months later finds Indians on the shore dressed in blood-stained cassocks. The English Protestant settlement of Jamestown is....

Attributions
By Petrohs - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47035085