It’s Time for Swallows and People to Flock to Capistrano

More than 10,000 people are expected for the traditional return of the swallows to Mission San Juan Capistrano on Sunday, with special festivities scheduled this year celebrating the historic ministry of Father Junipero Serra.

On Sunday, St. Joseph’s Day, the official welcoming of the swallows will take place between 6 and 8 a.m. at the mission, at Ortega Highway and Camino Capistrano.

The swallow festivities are the first since the beatification last summer of Serra, the priest who founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776. The beatification--the second of three steps to sainthood--was proclaimed by Pope John Paul II in Rome on Sept. 28, 1988.

This weekend’s festivities will mark the end of the Fiesta de las Golondrinas, or Festival of the Swallows, a series of celebrations during the past month.

The finale will begin today with the 31st annual non-motorized parade along Camino Capistrano. The city has closed off parts of Camino Capistrano and Ortega Highway to traffic for the parade, which will begin at 11 a.m. and run until 1 p.m. A rodeo sponsored by the Lions Club will follow at 2:30 p.m.

Serra’s chief U.S. supporter for sainthood, Father Noel Francis Moholy, will celebrate the noon Mass today at St. John’s of Capistrano, which adjoins the old mission. St. Joseph’s day is being observed on March 18 because March 19--the calendar observance and the day the swallows traditionally return to the mission--this year coincides with Palm Sunday.

On Sunday, tourists and birds will flock together in an event punctuated by the mission’s official bell ringer, Paul Arbiso, 93.

Mission school students will select this year’s “King and Queen of Spain” to preside over the entertainment by Aztec dancers, mariachis and the singing of the day’s official song, “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano.” The mission museum also plans to unveil an exhibit explaining the migration of the swallows and the scientific reasons behind their return to San Juan Capistrano and areas all over the nation.

Moholy will appear this afternoon on KOCE Channel 50 on William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line.” The taped show is titled “Saint or Sinner: Junipero Serra.”

Moholy, of San Francisco, whose official title is vice postulator, has been leading the effort to make Serra a saint for the past 40 years. He is the mission’s special guest for the weekend.

Most of the objections to Serra’s sainthood center around charges that the mission system he founded and presided over in California brutalized Native Americans, decimated their population and destroyed their culture.

Serra’s relations with the Indians are the focus of the television show, Moholy said.

Also appearing on the program will be Edward Castillo, a high school teacher and doctoral candidate from Laytonville, Ca., where most of his students are Indian. A Luiseno Indian, Castillo is a contributing author to the “California” volume of the Smithsonian Institution. Castillo also contributed to the recent anthology “The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide,” published by Indian Historian Press in San Francisco.

In his essay “Cultural Chauvinism Offered to Justify Serra Canonization,” Castillo writes that he “could not care less” about the canonization of Serra, whom he refers to as “this relic of the Spanish Inquisition.” He does complain, however, that some of Serra’s academic supporters have denigrated the culture of California Indians, whom he refers to as “one of the most productive and inventive, and caring of aboriginal peoples.”

In his writings, speeches and interviews, Moholy argues that Serra was a great supporter and defender of Indians and their rights and that any injuries they may have suffered during the mission period were inadvertent and not Serra’s fault.