Franciscan’s 35-Year Effort : He’s Pushing Father Serra for Sainthood

After the first of two heart attacks, the Rev. Noel Moholy asked a favor of 18th-Century Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra, the man he has been pushing for sainthood for 35 years.

“You know what you have,” Moholy prayed. “You have a bulldog like yourself who won’t give up. If you want more of the same, you’d better hang onto me.”

It seems to have worked. Moholy, 70, recovered to see the Roman Catholic Church declare Serra “venerable” last May, the first of three degrees of sanctity.

Moholy, a fellow Franciscan based in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin, said the next two steps are beatification and then canonization. Each requires a church-certified miracle.

Life of Heroic Virtue

The title of venerable recognizes a life of heroic virtue. Beatification permits special devotion and canonization means full sainthood.

“My personal dream is that he’ll be beatified in 1987, when Pope John Paul II visits California. That’s why I’m working so feverishly now to get a miracle,” Moholy said.

Moholy said there are 2,000 cases of would-be saints pending worldwide. But in the United States, only three have been named: Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, Sister Elizabeth Seaton and Bishop John Neumann.

Still, Moholy said the chances for beatification are very good. “The Pope is very favorable and he admires Serra a great deal. He certainly is aware of the whole situation.”

Interest in Saints

“The present Holy Father has definitely shown an interest in saints in new Catholic countries, including the United States,” said a spokesman for Washington’s Archbishop James A. Hickey, a member of Rome’s Congregation of Saints.

Moholy, an energetic, white-haired man who wears sandals and the traditional brown habit of the Franciscans, has traveled all over the world to gather documentation.

He has also raised more than half a million dollars since 1950 from donations, commemorative coins and albums such as “Songs of the California Missions.”

“I made a pact with Father Junipero Serra when I was appointed to this task. I would do the work if he would supply the funds,” he said. “From that day to this he’s never let me down. But he surely hasn’t spoiled me. I’m still scrounging.”

Generating Publicity

In 1958 he was appointed vice postulator, which means he heads Serra’s case worldwide. In addition to generating publicity for his cause, Moholy must provide all documentation, including Serra’s 800-page summarium, or legal brief.

Serra, aided by other priests and Spanish soldiers, helped colonize California by establishing the first mission in San Diego in 1769. For the next 15 years, several more were developed across the state.

“He was only a little guy--about 5 feet 2--but he was a giant by every other rule of measure,” he said.

Not everyone thinks Serra was so saintly, including some members of the American Indian community.

“He destroyed a whole culture, he decimated a population and he enslaved a people. That’s common knowledge,” said Rupert Costa, a Cahuilla Indian and president of the American Indian Historical Society in San Francisco. “In my opinion we might as well do that to Hitler. Make a saint out of him.”

Begs to Differ

Moholy disagrees.

“(Costa) is certainly not a spokesman for all Indians in California,” he said. “There is a popular criticism of the Spanish during the Mission period. But most of it is just that--popular. It does not stand up when it’s measured against historical facts and reliable documentation.”

“Serra is an inspiration to the moderns to correct social abuses, rectify inequities, but to do so by legal procedure,” Moholy said, citing the missionary’s support of the so-called Indian Bill of Rights.

Moholy said he has become familiar to bureaucrats in the church and government because of his tenacity. Dealing with them can be frustrating, but he said Serra had to overcome more severe obstacles every day of his life.

The latest incident involved the U.S. Postal Service and their airmail stamp depicting Serra in a modern-day brown habit instead of a gray one. Moholy had little trouble correcting the mistake.

“The only thing to do is to keep on going until you’ve accomplished your goal,” he said. “I get the impression that when I walk into an office, they say, ‘We’d better do something. This guy’s never going to let go.’ ”