Today is the feast day of St. Junipero Serra, and so I wanted to share something that I wrote recently on Facebook:
I’m saddened by the mob’s destruction of the St. Junipero Serra statue in San Francisco, and the City of Ventura’s decision to remove their Serra statue. [Since writing this, there’s been one clear sign of hope: a small group of Catholics, including my brother-in-law, prayed by the statue, preventing a mob of protesters from tearing it down. The City of Ventura has now pressed pause on its decision to remove the statute, and will be holding an online “community discussion” on July 7th to decide the statue’s fate. ] Besides the fact that we wouldn’t have California without him (a fact for which he can be forgiven), he’s also a literal Saint.
No historical figure is perfect, but Serra is one of the better ones. The vast majority of the criticisms he’s subjected to are either (a) untrue, (b) really just criticisms people who came after him, or (c) objections to the whole idea of evangelization. Blaming Serra for the bad actions of later missionaries would be as silly as blaming Serra for Gov. Newsom. Even Prof. Edward Castillo, who opposed the move to canonize Serra, admitted that “in my work I haven’t cited Serra as oppressor. You can’t put a whip in his hand. You can’t put a smoking gun in his hand. And that is true. The man was an administrator.”
And it might be added that Serra actually defended the Indians of California against Spanish brutality, and brought innumerable people to Christ. He traded a comfortable life in Spain for a grueling frontier life, because he valued the lives of the Indians over his own. From either a secular or a Catholic perspective, the man deserves to be honored.
thanks