Pope Beatifies Junipero Serra and 5 Others

As spiritual pageantry blended with pilgrims’ prayers, Pope John Paul II welcomed an 18th-Century Spanish friar known as “the Apostle of California” to the blessed inner circle of the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday.

The Pope solemnly beatified Franciscan Father Junipero Serra, founder of the California mission system, hailing him as “a shining example of Christian virtue and the missionary spirit.”

To the applause of several hundred Californians among 30,000 worshipers in St. Peter’s Square on a splendid September morning, the controversial missionary became “Blessed Junipero Serra.”

He is now one step short of sainthood.

“All we need for canonization is one more miracle, today or hereafter,” said Father Noel F. Moholy, a Franciscan priest from San Francisco who has advanced Serra’s spiritual cause through the Vatican bureaucracy for three decades.

With files of cardinals and bishops flanking the flower-decked altar before St. Peter’s Cathedral, John Paul also beatified five other Roman Catholics who led lives of “heroic virtue.” One of them, Jesuit Miguel Pro, executed by a Mexican firing squad in 1927, studied in Los Gatos, Calif., while in exile from a violently anti-clerical Mexican government.

“A moving and emotional experience,” retired Cardinal Timothy Manning of Los Angeles said. “Father Pro was very close to us Californians, and for Father Serra, today marked the climax of a 200-year wait.”

John Paul sat relaxed and in fine voice upon a white and gold upholstered throne to receive the formal appeals for beatification from bishops representing the candidates: three New World missionaries, an Italian parish priest, a Sicilian cardinal and a Spanish lay woman.

Serra’s beatification had been opposed by some Indian groups in California critical of the treatment Indians received under the mission system. Vatican researchers, however, who painstakingly examined the historical record as part of the beatification process, came away convinced that Serra was more champion of the Indians than their oppressor.

“There would have been no beatification if there was any shred of doubt,” said Msgr. Robert J. Sarno, an official of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.

Noting Serra’s birth in Spain and his early missionary experience in Mexico, Bishop Thaddeus Shubsda of Monterey recalled his establishment of nine California missions beginning in San Diego in 1769. “Always go forward, never go back,” was Serra’s motto, Shubsda told the Pope in a brief address begun in Spanish and ended in English.

As the Pope rose to reply to the six bishops, the giant square erupted with fluttering flags and banners waved by groups of pilgrims who had come to cheer hometown favorites on the road to sainthood. Off to the Pope’s right came cheers for Serra from delegations of California pilgrims from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Monterey and Sacramento.

“In California is my life, and there, God willing, I hope to die,” Serra once wrote.

He died in Carmel on Aug. 28, 1784. Henceforth, by papal decree, California Catholics will observe each Aug. 28 as the Feast of Junipero Serra.

The Pope portrayed Serra as a defender of the Indian peoples among whom he traveled continually to evangelize.

“He also had to admonish the powerful not to abuse and exploit the poor and the weak,” the Pope said.

From his seat beside the majestically adorned altar, Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony was moved by a sense of history as the Pope celebrated a Mass of rejoicing.

“The whole history of California seemed to flash before my eyes; especially the coming of the Gospel and all it means,” said Mahony. “And to have Father Pro on the same day. . . . What it cost to proclaim the Gospel!”

Pro, who died at 36 proclaiming “Viva Cristo Rey” (Long live Christ the King), was an underground priest in Mexico when open profession of Catholicism was forbidden in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. He was summarily executed with his brother and two friends for supposedly conspiring in an attempt to kill President Alvaro Obregon. Vatican researchers found no proof of his involvement in the assassination attempt.

The ceremony also drew pilgrims from opposite ends of Italy. From the north came Piedmontese to celebrate the beatification of Father Francesco Faa di Bruno, a 19th-Century parish priest and teacher. From Sicily came worshipers to cheer for Cardinal Giuseppe Benedetto Dusmet, a 19th-Century archbishop of Catania known for his love of the poor.

Among those in the square were about 3,500 Spanish pilgrims who had come to honor Josefa Naval Girbes (1820-1893), “a model of virtue and humility.” The sixth figure to be beatified Sunday was French-born, French-Canadian missionary Frederic Janssoone Bollengier, who died in 1916. Like Serra, the man remembered in Trois-Rivieres in Quebec simply as Pere Frederic was a member of the Franciscan order of priests.

Sheltering under a beige umbrella from a midday sun that tasted of lingering summer, Franciscan Father Arnold Brown from Manhattan watched in wonder as 20 green-robed priests concelebrated the Mass with John Paul.

“It’s like a dream come true,” he said. “I’ve been praying to these two guys for so many years; it’s like watching my best friends being beatified.”

Unifying different causes, nationalities and centuries, the beatification Mass itself was Roman Catholicism at its most polyglot. The Mass was said in Latin, English, French, Spanish and Italian.

In a firm and clear American voice, 30-year-old Ann Clare Johnson of San Jose, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, read the First Lesson from the Book of Numbers: “ . . . If only the whole people of the Lord were prophets and the Lord gave His spirit to them all.”

‘Not a Bit Nervous’

“I was thrilled, not a bit nervous,” she said later over a bowl of fettucini. Johnson suffers from apparently incurable bone cancer. She is praying for the intercession of Junipero Serra.

Praying among the worshipers Sunday was Sister Mary Boniface Dyrda, a 72-year-old Franciscan nun from St. Louis whose inexplicable cure from a supposedly incurable nerve disease in 1960 is attributed to Serra and is considered miraculous by the Vatican.

Serra was proclaimed “venerable” by John Paul in 1985, the first step toward becoming a saint. Subsequent certification of the miracle, together with the exhaustive study of his life, qualified Serra for beatification Sunday. He can remain “blessed” or advance to sainthood if the church accepts evidence of any subsequent miracles.

San Franciscan John O’Rourke, a father who prays for a miracle, read the final prayer of the faithful at Sunday’s Mass:

“We praise God for the glorification of the new Beati (and pray that) we may resolve to follow their example and offer the world a sign of hope amid the trials of daily life.”

Amid the trials of his daily life, O’Rourke is a supplicant to Blessed Junipero Serra. His 5-year-old son, Brendan, embraced by the Pope on his visit to California last year, is afflicted with AIDS--acquired immune deficiency syndrome.