Pope Won’t Beatify Serra During Visit, Vatican Says

The widely expected beatification of Father Junipero Serra, the 18th-Century priest known as the “Apostle of California,” will not take place during the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States next month, a Vatican spokesman said Friday.

“The normal procedures (leading to beatification) have not been completed yet, and there is not sufficient time to complete them before the visit,” said the spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro Valls.

Serra’s backers had hoped that beatification, the second of three steps toward sainthood, would be celebrated at the Pope’s Sept. 17 Mass at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey. After the Mass the pontiff is scheduled to travel by helicopter to the nearby Carmel Mission, which Serra founded in 1770 and where he was buried in 1784.

Informed of the Vatican’s decision, Father Noel Moholy of San Francisco--for 30 years the chief advocate of sainthood for Serra--said in a telephone interview from Carmel Mission that at first he was “upset and disturbed” by the news.

Speaking later from the mission, Moholy said: “I immediately went to pray at the old man’s grave. Then I said Mass, and a marvelous peace of mind came over me.”

Moholy, whose official title is vice postulator of Serra’s cause, said that the Vatican’s decision “doesn’t kill any of my hope at all.”

Serra experienced “numerous apparent reverses while settling California,” Moholy said. “I’m as resigned to God’s will as he was . . . that’s the way it’s been with the cause all along.”

Expectations of the beatification were raised last month when medical and theological panels ruled favorably on Serra’s role in the seemingly miraculous cure of a St. Louis nun who prayed for his help 27 years ago.

Normally the approval of such panels in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints must be formally affirmed at a plenary session of the congregation’s widely scattered cardinals and bishops before being presented to the Pope for a final decision.

Because so little time remains before the papal journey to gather the cardinals and bishops, it had been expected that the case would get immediate papal attention, bypassing the formal approval of the full congregation. But Navarro said the pontiff believes that the normal requirements must be fulfilled before he can make a decision on the beatification.

“The plenary meeting of the cardinals to confirm the miracle is missing,” Navarro said. “Obviously, there is not enough time to call them together before the visit.”

Pope Has Been Strict

Navarro added that “the Pope has always been very strict about following all of the required steps.”

Navarro acknowledged that in two recent cases, the pontiff accelerated the process by waiving the normal requirement of one proven miracle for beatification and two miracles for canonization to sainthood.

During his visit to West Germany in May, the Pope beatified Edith Stein, a Jewish-born nun who died at Auschwitz in 1942. In 1982, he canonized another Auschwitz victim, Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Pole.

While neither had completely fulfilled the miracle requirements, both were considered to be martyrs, unlike Serra, and therefore fell into a special category, Navarro explained.

Announcing beatifications during papal visits has been a custom of the Pope since 1980, when Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila suggested to John Paul II that it might be a good idea to personally announce the beatification of 16 Catholic martyrs during his Philippines visit in 1981.

Although that ceremony and others like it since have been well received, the Pope has not announced beatifications on every tour. While in Australia in 1986, the pontiff did not announce the expected beatification of Mother Mary MacKillop, a 19th-Century nun who founded the largest order in Australia, explaining that--as in the case of Serra--the complex procedure had not been completed in time.

Since 1981, independent of the Pope’s itinerary, a majority of beatifications recommended by the congregation have been announced in Rome, where canonization--the third step to sainthood--almost always takes place. Nonetheless, Moholy is still keeping one eye on the Pope’s travel plans, noting that in 1988 the pontiff is expected to make a one-day visit to the Mediterranean island of Majorca, where Serra was born in 1713.

Beatification Expected

“I’m confident that the beatification will proceed during the papal visit to Majorca,” Moholy said, acknowledging that he had been equally confident last week that the beatification would take place in Monterey. The timing of the Majorca trip, he said, “falls into place beautifully.”

Serra founded the first of a chain of nine Franciscan missions at San Diego in 1769, and his order created a total of 21 missions, from San Diego to Sonoma. The pontiff declared Serra “venerable,” the first step toward sainthood, in 1985.

To achieve the second step, beatification, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints must be able to attribute a miracle to the candidate’s intercession. In Serra’s case, the medical and theological panels of the congregation studied the cure of Sister Boniface Dyrda of St. Louis, who prayed for his intervention when she was near death from lupus, a disease of the connective tissues. They found no scientific explanation for her recovery.

The full congregation’s evaluation of a miracle--a majority vote to affirm, oppose or delay consideration--is then taken to the Pope by Cardinal Pietro Palazzini, prefect of the congregation, along with the findings of the medical and theological panels, for a final decision.

Don Schanche reported from Vatican City and Mark I. Pinsky from California.