San Juan Capistrano : Statue of Serra to Wait Before Finding Its Niche

A larger-than-life statue of Father Junipero Serra, commissioned by a wealthy Spanish woman in anticipation of Serra’s beatification, will have to wait a while longer in a storeroom before it is displayed in the new San Juan Capistrano Mission Catholic Church. Serra, known as “the Apostle of California,” founded the Old Mission adjoining the church in 1769.

Since the Vatican announced Aug. 8 that because the complex process leading to beatification--the second of three steps to sainthood--has not been completed, the pressure is off church officials to find a place for the wooden replica, commissioned by Mara Dome. Pope John Paul II had been expected to proclaim Serra’s beatification during an outdoor Mass in Monterey on Sept. 17.

By church law, only the images of those who reached the stage of beatification may be displayed within a church sanctuary.

Complicating the matter was the fact that when the 250-pound statue, created by sculptor Juan de Avalos, was recently uncrated after arriving from Spain it turned out to be far too large for the niche prepared for it in the sanctuary, according to caretaker Richard Calef.

With the announcement from Rome, said Dick Landy, a mission spokesman, “there’s no anxiety on our part” to figure out how to display the statue in the church within the next month.

A bronze version of the statue, almost identical to the one in San Juan Capistrano, was unveiled Friday in the garden of the Carmel Mission, which Serra founded in 1770 and where he was buried in 1784.

Dome, 40, is a devout Catholic from the city of San Roque, where her family makes sherry. She decided to commission both statues, Landy said, after a 1985 horseback tour of the missions founded by Serra and other missionaries between Sonoma and San Diego.