Feast day: July 1

St. Junípero Serra

Priest & Missionary · 1713–1784

Patron of California, vocations

Franciscan who left a comfortable professorship in Mallorca to walk thousands of miles founding the California missions.

Junípero Serra was born in 1713 on the island of Majorca, off Spain, and entered the Franciscan Order as a young man, becoming a distinguished professor of philosophy and theology. At about thirty-six, already a respected academic, he gave it all up to become a missionary in the New World, sailing for Mexico in 1749.

After years of mission work in Mexico — during which he developed a chronic, painful leg ailment from an insect bite that troubled him the rest of his life, though he refused to spare himself — he was sent north in 1769 to begin the evangelization of Upper California, then a remote and little-known frontier.

There, despite his age and infirmity, he founded the first nine of the famous chain of California missions, beginning with San Diego in 1769 and including San Carlos, San Gabriel, San Francisco, and San Juan Capistrano. He baptized thousands of Native Americans and learned to defend them against the harsh treatment of soldiers and colonial officials, though his missions and methods remain debated today.

He died at Monterey in 1784, having travelled thousands of miles on his lame leg to serve his missions. Canonized in 2015 by Pope Francis — the first canonization on American soil — he is honoured as the Apostle of California.

San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara — the map of California is largely a list of his missions.

“Always go forward, never turn back.”
— St. Junípero Serra

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/13730b.htm