continued…On Sept. 23, 2015, in Washington D.C., Pope Francis will canonize Father Junipero Serra as a saint. Serra’s birth name was Miquel Josep Serra i Ferrer and he took the name “Junipero” in honor of Saint Juniper who was a Franciscan companion of Saint Francis of Assisi. Native American Indians long have protested the attempts to canonize Serra, sometimes protesting outside Mission San Juan Capistrano on Columbus Day. Many consider the missions in Alta California and their Franciscan administrators as part of an enormously destructive colonization process. Cattle ranching and sheep grazing led to the collapse of the Native Indian’s traditional economy, aided by a later law banning the Indians from burning the landscape. Indians began flocking to the missions and the new Spanish towns of Los Angeles and San Francisco as their ancient food supplies dwindled. Those who converted were forced to drop their old ways and eat, dress and act like the Europeans. The Spanish, largely through disease, were responsible for a population decline

from about 300,000 Indians in 1769 to about 200,000 by 1821. The Indians had no immunity to the European diseases, including chicken pox and measles. The

strenuous work regime and high population density within the missions themselves also caused high death rates among the mission Indians. By law, all baptized Indians subjected themselves completely to the authority of the

Franciscans; they could be whipped, shackled or imprisoned for disobedience, and hunted down if they fled the mission grounds. Indian recruits, were often forced to convert nearly at gunpoint, their beliefs and customs banned, and they could only be expected to survive mission life for about ten years. As one Friar noted, the Indians “live well free but as soon as we reduce them to a Christian and community life… they fatten, sicken, and die.” When Serra died in 1784, the mission system was still in its infancy. Ultimately, the system grew to 21 missions, however less than one quarter of the Indian population was ever converted to Christianity. Of the 80,000 baptized by the end of the mission era

in the 1830s, 60,000 had died, of whom 25,000 were children under 10 years old. The Yankee invasion and the Gold Rush dealt a final blow. By 1855, only 50,000 Indians were left in California and, with the coming of the railroads, they’d soon be overrun by newcomers. Today, many Indians and academics

disagree with the decision to award sainthood, pointing to the harsh conditions of mission life and Serra’s own justification of beatings. But Serra fought efforts to enslave the Indians and whippings were a common method of discipline for all men in the Spanish empire. As professor Thomas P. Rausch says, it is an evaluation of “an 18th century Catholic missionary by 21st century standards”…”The question we should ask is this: Was the message of

the Gospel worth hearing in the first place?” Serra modeled his life on the gospel of love, not a desire for land or gold as Columbus did who enslaved and tortured Caribbean natives in his quest for precious metals. And would we even have our Catholic churches in California without Serra?

Sources: KQED News, LA Times, News.VA, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, SFMuseum.net