West of Matanzas Bay you find Mission Nombre de Dios, founded as a Catholic mission in 1587. This site, part of the Diocese of St. Augustine, was founded as a Catholic mission in 1587 and is likely the oldest extant mission in the continental United States. On these grounds sits the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, the oldest shrine in this region.
The story here reaches back further: on September 8, 1565 Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed with a band of settlers to found St. Augustine, and Fr Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, OFM, the expedition’s chaplain, celebrated the first Thanksgiving Mass on the very ground where you now stand. The formal Franciscan mission established at that landing point in 1587 served nearby Mocama villages — the Mocama being a Timucua group — and became the center of an important chiefdom in the late 16th and 17th century. Jesuits, and later the Franciscans, ministered to Spanish colonists and worked to evangelize the Mocama and Agua Dulce peoples near St. Augustine, with particular success in the Mocama village known as Nombre.
Picture Father López de Mendoza Grajales celebrating that first Thanksgiving Mass on this very ground in 1565.