Bl Junipero Serra brought Christianity to California. Who are you bringing Christianity to?

In a surprise announcement, Pope Francis has disclosed that he plans to preside at the canonization of Blessed Junipero Serra this year.

Speaking to reporters who accompanied him on a flight from Sri Lanka to the Philippines on January 15, the Pontiff said: "In September, God willing, I will canonize Junipero Serra in the United States."

The Pontiff is scheduled to travel to the US in September, to attend the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. The details of the papal trip, including the other stops that he might make, have not been settled.

Blessed Junipero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan, established a string of missions along the California coast. He is the leading figure in the evangelization of California during the 18th century.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=23737

It looks like the canonization may be carried out in Washington DC. Here is an excerpt from the interview Pope Francis gave on his return trip from the Phillipines;

 Let’s go the first question of the United States. Yes, the three cities are Philadelphia, for the Meeting of Families; New York, I have the date already but I can’t remember, for the visit at the UN; and Washington. It is these three.
I would like to go to California for the canonization of Junipero, but I think there is a problem of time. It requires two more days . I think that I will do that canonization at the shrine (of the Immaculate Conception) in Washington, it is is a national thing.
In Washington, I’m not sure where, there is a statue of Junipero, at the capitol.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/full-text-of-popes-in-flight-interview-from-manila-to-rome-84716/

Pope Francis will visit the North American College in Rome on May 2, to participate in a day devoted to Blessed Junipero Serra.

The Holy Father will celebrate Mass at the North American College: the institution where some of America’s most promising seminarians live while studying in Rome.

The May 2 event is a day of reflection on the witness of Blessed Junipero Serra. Pope Francis has said that he plans to canonize the great Franciscan missionary during his September visit to the US.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=24657

Pope Francis urged American seminarians to imitate the missionary zeal, Marian devotion, and witness of holiness of Blessed Junipero Serra (1713-84), the Franciscan friar who evangelized California.

The Pontiff, who described Serra as “one of the founding fathers of the United States,” made his remarks on May 2 during a Mass at the Pontifical North American College, which was hosting a day of reflection on Serra’s life in view of his impending canonization.

“What made Friar Junípero leave his home and country, his family, university chair and Franciscan community in Mallorca to go to the ends of the earth?” Pope Francis asked. “Certainly, it was the desire to proclaim the Gospel ad gentes [to the nations], that heartfelt impulse which seeks to share with those farthest away the gift of encountering Christ: a gift that he had first received and experienced in all its truth and beauty.”

“But I wonder if today we are able to respond with the same generosity and courage to the call of God, who invites us to leave everything in order to worship him, to follow him, to rediscover him in the face of the poor, to proclaim him to those who have not known Christ and, therefore, have not experienced the embrace of his mercy,” he continued. “Friar Junípero’s witness calls upon us to get involved, personally, in the mission to the whole continent, which finds its roots in Evangelii Gaudium [the joy of the Gospel].”

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=24806

 Blessed Junipero Serra’s love for the natives of California extended even to those who killed one of his friends and fellow missionaries, the Archbishop of Los Angeles has said in a summary of an early argument against the death penalty for a native Californian.

“In his appeals, he said some truly remarkable things about human dignity, human rights and the mercy of God,” Archbishop Jose Gomez said in Kansas City, Kansas July 29.

The archbishop reflected on the Franciscan missionary’s actions in the wake of a 1775 attack by California natives on the San Diego mission.

“They burned the whole place down and they tortured and killed one of the Franciscans there, a good friend of Fray Junipero,” Archbishop Gomez recounted.

While the Spanish military wanted to arrest the natives and execute them, Father Junipero Serra repeatedly wrote to urge them to spare the accused.

Father Serra, a Franciscan missionary, helped found many of the Californian missions that went on to become the centers of major cities. The California natives who joined the missions learned the faith, as well as the technologies and learning of Europe.

Pope Francis will canonize Father Serra during his U.S. visit in September.

“In his writings, we find deep love for the native peoples he had come to evangelize,” Archbishop Gomez said of the missionary.

The Los Angeles archbishop reflected on one episode of the missionary’s life in his keynote speech at the National Diocesan Pro-Life Leadership Conference.

Father Serra asked Spanish authorities to spare the lives of the California natives who had attacked the San Diego mission, even though they had killed several people.

In a Dec. 15, 1775 letter to the Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio Maria de Bucareli y Ursua, the priest said, “let the murderer live so he can be saved, which is the purpose of our coming here and the reason for forgiving him.”

The priest’s letter went on to encourage not execution but rather what he characterized as “moderate punishment” to help the killer understand that he is being pardoned by a law “which orders us to forgive offenses and to prepare him, not for his death, but for eternal life.” The letter is translated in the book Junipero Serra by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz.

Father Serra said that one of the most important things he himself requested was that “if the Indians were to kill me … they should be forgiven.”

Archbishop Gomez suggested that Father Serra was “the first person in the Americas – and maybe in all of the universal Church – to make a theological and moral argument against the death penalty.”

He said Father Serra and his fellow missionaries showed “a passionate commitment to human life and human dignity.” For Archbishop Gomez, Father Serra was “a defender and protector of the native peoples,” especially women, from the “systematic violence” of the Spanish military. Though many Europeans denied the natives’ humanity, Father Serra drew up a “bill of rights” that called for justice and the promotion of human development.

Archbishop Gomez drew a lesson from this, encouraging pro-life Catholic leaders to “follow in the path of the missionaries and saints of the Americas and to proclaim the Gospel of life, which is the heart of the message of Jesus.”

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/how-junipero-serra-fought-the-death-penalty-for-a-california-native-25862/

The upcoming canonization of Blessed Junípero Serra in Washington, D.C.—the first ever to take place on American soil—has generated, as I’m sure you know, a good deal of controversy. For his defenders, Padre Serra was an intrepid evangelist and a model of Gospel living, while for his detractors, he was a shameless advocate of an oppressive colonial system that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Indians. Even many who typically back Pope Francis see this canonization as a rare faux pas for the Argentine Pontiff. What should we make of all this?

It might first be wise to rehearse some of the basic facts of Serra’s life. He was born in 1713 on the beautiful island of Mallorca off of the Spanish coast, and as a very young man, he joined a particularly severe branch of the Franciscan order. He quickly became a star in the community, recognized for his impressive intellectual gifts and his profound spirituality. After many years of study, he earned his doctorate in philosophy and commenced a teaching career, which culminated in his receiving the Duns Scotus Chair of philosophy. But when Padre Serra was thirty-six, he resolved to abandon his relatively comfortable life and promising career and become a missionary in the New World. He undertook this mission out of a sincere and deeply-felt desire to save souls, knowing full well that he would likely never return to his homeland. After spending a few years in Mexico City doing administrative work, he realized his dream to work with the native peoples of New Spain, first in Mexico and then in what was then called Baja California (Lower California). When he was around fifty years old, he was asked by his superiors to lead a missionary endeavor in Alta California, more or less the present day state of California. With the help of a small band of Franciscan brothers and under the protection of the Spanish government, he established a series of missions along the Pacific coast, from San Diego to San Francisco.  He died in 1784 and was buried at the San Carlos Borromeo Mission in Carmel by the Sea.  

Much of the disagreement regarding Junípero Serra hinges upon the interpretation of the mission project that he undertook. Though it is certainly true that the Imperial Spanish authorities had an interest in establishing a strong Spanish presence along the Pacific coast in order to block the intrusion of Russian settlers in the region, there is no doubt that Serra’s first intention in setting up the missions was to evangelize the native peoples. What fired his heart above all was the prospect of announcing the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who had never before heard it, and there is no question that his missions provided the institutional framework for that proclamation. Moreover, the missions were places where the Indians were taught the principles of agriculture and animal husbandry, which enabled them to move beyond a merely nomadic lifestyle. I find it fascinating, by the way, that there was nothing even vaguely analogous to these missions on the other side of the continent. Though by our standards they treated the native people in a rather patronizing manner, the Spanish evangelized and instructed the Indians, whereas the British settlers in the American colonies more or less pushed them out of the way.

Critics of Serra’s project claim that Indians were compelled to join the missions, essentially as a slave labor force, and were baptized against their will. The consensus of responsible historians, however, is that both of these charges are false. In fact, the vast majority of the Indians recognized the advantage of living in connection with the missions, and only about 10% of those who had come to missions opted to leave. To be sure, those who left were hunted down and, upon their return, were sometimes subjected to corporal punishment. Indeed, there is real evidence that Padre Serra countenanced such violence: in one of his letters, he speaks of the need to punish wayward Indians the way a parent would chastise a recalcitrant child, and in another docuмent, he authorizes the purchase of shackles for the mission in San Diego. Certainly from our more enlightened perspective, we would recognize such behavior as morally wrong, and it is no good trying to whitewash the historical record so as to present Serra as blameless.

Having acknowledged this, however, it is most important to note that the lion’s share of the evidence we have strongly indicates that Serra was a steadfast friend to the native peoples, frequently defending them against the violence and prejudice of the Spanish civil authorities. Very much in the spirit of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the great sixteenth-century defender of the Indians, Serra insisted, again and again, upon the rights and prerogatives of the native tribes. In one case, he spoke out against the execution of an Indian who had killed one of Serra’s own friends and colleagues, arguing that the whole point of his mission was to save life, not to take it. As Archbishop Jose Gomez has argued, this represents one of the first principled arguments against capital punishment ever to appear in Western culture.

One might ask why Pope Francis—who certainly knows all of the controversy surrounding Padre Serra—wants to push ahead with this canonization. He does so, I would speculate, for two reasons. First, he understands that declaring someone a saint is not to declare him or her morally flawless, nor is it to countenance every institution with which the saint was associated. Secondly and more importantly, he sees Junípero Serra as someone who, with extraordinary moral courage, went to the periphery of the society of his time in order to announce Jesus Christ. Serra could have pursued a very respectable career in the comfortable halls of European academy; but he opted to go, at great personal cost, to the margins—and this makes him an extraordinary model of a Pope Francis style missionary.

Was Padre Serra perfect? By no means. Was he a saint?  Absolutely.

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/why-junipero-serra-matters-today