In Theory: Is Father Junipero Serra worthy of sainthood?

Pope Francis announced this month he plans to canonize and elevate to sainthood Father Junipero Serra, the 18th-century Spanish Franciscan priest who famously founded nine of the California missions.

The announcement was met with “joy, shock, pain and condemnation,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

“The mission system cemented Catholicism in the state but nearly eradicated several Indian tribes,” the Times reports.

Serra was the “evangelizer of the West,” the Pope said. According to the Times, Father John Vaughn at Mission Santa Barbara was a key advocate for Serra’s canonization, and Archbishop Jose Gomez, head of the archdiocese of Los Angeles, called the decision a “gift to California and the Americas.”

But critics of the decision, including Native Americans, paint a different picture of Serra.

“The mission system imposed pressure on Indians to assimilate while also exposing thousands to foreign diseases, wiping out villages, native animals and plants,” the Times reports.

Q. In your opinion, is Father Serra worthy of canonization? As Californians, do you have a positive or negative perception of Father Serra? In your respective faiths, are there any figures who may also be highly revered despite any alleged or actual unseemly deeds? If so, how do you reconcile any conflicting opinions?

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On the question of sainthood, I am probably not the best person to ask. For one thing, I am a Protestant, not a Roman Catholic, and I will readily admit to some of the prejudices typical of Protestants. My problem is that I believe in the grace of God, that God “saves” us because of God’s nature and not ours and certainly not because we “deserve” anything from God.

The whole practice of canonizing people seems to miss the point of God’s grace and instead emphasizes human good works. While I am sure some human beings, including the saints and others, deserve some recognition because of how generous they were with their lives, it seems to me that we hold these people above ground somehow, sort of on pedestals, and such veneration in my mind comes close to the worshipping of idols. Sorry to say that, but as I said above, “I am a Protestant,” and we don’t believe in that stuff! What’s the first commandment say? “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Be careful, those of you who venerate the saints!

You are coming close — in my opinion — to worshipping those folks, and that’s a no-no.

What do I think about Father Junipero Serra? I’ve always sort of admired him, but back when he was alive, I think it’s true that political conquering by the Spanish also involved the forcing of people to become Christians… or else!

Remember also that even in our beloved history, some whites called the Native Americans “savages.” Supposedly we are more sensitive now, and maybe it is unfair to criticize our more brutal forbears, but I think the truth is that Serra and others, while thinking they were spreading the word of God, were also spreading the rule of Spain.

One more thing: I was living in the Bay Area when Mother Theresa came for a visit. The locals in charge of where she was staying gave her a more luxurious place than she wanted. I can still remember TV camera pictures of her throwing things like thick carpets out the window because, apparently, she didn’t want to be treated like royalty but like a common woman. But evidently some of us need to put people on pedestals, even when they prefer to walk down here among us!

The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada Flintridge

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No human, let alone a human with as much baggage as Junipero Serra, qualifies for sainthood, in my opinion.

There is nothing alleged about the genocide the mission system perpetrated on Native Californians. Of the more than 300,000 American Indians in California in 1769, just one-sixth, about 50,000, remained of the population 100 years later.

Serra’s defenders say that he personally treated Indians with compassion at times. Defenders of the Roman Catholic’s mission system say that the deaths of most of the Indian population and the extinguishing of their culture and livelihood were not intended or done maliciously on the part of the church, and that Christian salvation justifies the negatives. None of these excuses make it OK, and certainly not praiseworthy.

Pope Francis has announced that despite the special significance of this monumental announcement to California, he can’t fit in a flight out here from Philadelphia during his U.S. visit this fall.

Makes me wonder if he thinks his reception here would reveal more negative than positive feelings about canonizing Father Serra.

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose

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I have no right to make a judgment about whether Father Serra should be made a saint since I am not a part of the Catholic church. That decision is a choice that is granted to the Catholic hierarchy, something that is very foreign to the religious tradition that I serve. And there are many arcane deliberations that govern such pronouncements that I don’t know.

What I can say is that historical research tells us that in addition to establishing missions throughout California for the Catholic church, Father Serra’s accomplishments did great harm to the indigenous population of Native Americans, robbing them of their inherent faith, their land, and even some of their lives. So I find it difficult to put a positive spin on that. I believe that whenever we take away the rights of others to believe and live as they choose to support our own religious tradition, we do them great harm. And many indigenous Californians seem to share that view.

In my own denomination, we often point to Thomas Jefferson as an exemplar of our free religious faith. But we now know that he had very demeaning views about people of color and that he fathered children by a slave woman on his plantation. So do his positive contributions to the establishment of our country outweigh these faults? I don’t know. But I would certainly not declare him a saint.

Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Verdugo Hills
La Crescenta

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The whole canonization thing itself is unsettling to me. The Bible calls all true Christians “saints.” I think it’s those who recognize their lack of membership in that number who inappropriately apply the term to perceived examples.

People say things like “My mother was a saint!” She could have been completely pagan, but since she took good care of the family, it’s assumed she earned the title. That’s wrong, technically speaking, and it seems to me just the flip-side of what the Vatican does when it posthumously elevates renown churchmen to official “sainthood,” complete with feast days, figurines, and holy cards. It injures the meaning, and to my Protestant mind, it’s like granting stars on the Walk of Fame and then telling passersby that they must bend down and kiss them. I don’t mind people being honored, but I’d prefer that sainthood be left to the regular folk who simply comprise Christ’s true believers throughout the world.

That said, I understand the Roman practice of doing what they are proposing for Junipero Serra, and as their most prolific Missions builder in California, who can fault them for recognizing their star? Many natives, apparently can, and are, by denouncing the 18th-century colonial way that Serra introduced them to Jesus. That they were introduced to Jesus at all is something that I can appreciate, and so too, the thousands of Christian Native Americans that now number among the saints — despite the questionable beginnings.

None of us ever encountered the man in question, but I imagine that he “ministered” with his European sensibilities in the way believed best at the time when dealing with a population of conquered Stone Age people. Things are different now in the way missionaries understand, approach and better respect indigenous cultures when delivering the Gospel. But even saints are simultaneously sinners, and none deserve recognition for anything if whatever good they do must be immediately discounted for their human imperfections. Whether the padre was truly a saint or not, canonization will add absolutely nothing to his own current personal experience in death. To each his own.

Rev. Bryan Griem
Montrose Community Church
Montrose