I think an imperfect but apt analogy can be drawn between the way Jews feel about Jerusalem and Catholics do about Rome. In some sense, it is always “home” and so we honor it not only as the site of martyrdom for Peter and Paul, but as the Eternal City and the Caput Mundi (“head of the world”). And though Italy does and always will hold a special place in my heart after studying there, Spain, and in particular Mallorca, has come to rival it as my favorite cultural destination abroad during the last decade. I have spent many months there in recent years and am becoming fluent with the island’s mentality, history and favored sons and daughters. Among these, Junipero Serra is certainly one of the most prominent. (Perhaps not the most, though, as the Balearic islanders ardently maintain that Columbus was born and raised there, and not, as is commonly thought, in Genoa.)
When I return again for the summer this year, I plan to spend a morning, before the heat gets overwhelming, revisiting Serra’s family home and parish church in the sleepy town of Petra, a seemingly unimaginable distance from where he spent so much of his life, on North America’s Pacific coast. (His Spanish pride made him refuse to call the ocean by the Portuguese name given it by Magellan which we use today. Instead, Serra insisted on referring to it by the Spanish explorer Balboa’s earlier, if geographically-confused, epithet Mar del Sur — the Southern Sea).
Born in 1713, the Franciscan priest Serra is recognized as the “founder of California.” It largely goes unnoticed today that so many of the cities on the West Coast had Catholic origins. Glance at any map and it becomes clear by the names alone: Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sacramento and others. These regions had their foundations in Spanish Catholic missions to the unevangelized native peoples, many of which were started by Serra or his successors, although laymen like Gabriel Moraga named some of them as well.
Even the San Diego baseball team takes its name from this reality. I wonder how the notoriously severe Serra would react to seeing the Padres recast his image as their smiling cartoonish mascot “The Swinging Friar.”
The history of colonization is without doubt one replete with controversy. While the missions did provide large degrees of spiritual and physical nourishment for the natives, the political and economic realities of the Age of Exploration were not free from horrific missteps and abuses in unimaginable ways. Corporal punishment and zealous mandatory mortifications were not outside of the missionaries’ methods of spreading the Gospel, as were of course threats of eternal damnation. Inculpable ignorance was not high on their list of theological priorities. It is not debatable that Serra did, however, fight for the rights of the mission’s inhabitants against the Spanish crown and put authentic conversion before the diplomatic intrigues of the day.
During his lifetime, his devotion and sanctity were supposedly renowned throughout the area. A fellow Mallorcan friar, Francisco Palóu, wrote the definitive biography of Serra shortly after his death. It is a strikingly positive account and its vision of him as a saintly pioneer is the one enshrined in Serra’s statue in the U.S. Capitol and ubiquitous presence as a namesake in the American West. Yet, the historical accuracy of every dimension of the hagiography (meaning idealized account of a saint) cannot be determined without caveat.
Centuries later, John Paul II would indeed mention Serra by name as an example of those missionaries who “with good hearts and good minds, shared knowledge and skills from their own cultures and shared their most precious heritage, their faith.”
Junipero Serra is today one step away from canonization. And while I wish it were otherwise, the gratuitous and unmerited blessings which pave the way for me to live in Mallorca for extended periods of time are not likely to fulfill one of the necessary miracles required by the Vatican for his rise to sainthood, even if I do feel particularly close to him and seek his intercession often.
Michael M. Canaris is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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