St. Junípero Serra

Born on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, Miguel José Serra became a Franciscan friar and a distinguished professor of philosophy before leaving the security of academic life to become a missionary in the New World. Taking the name Junípero after a companion of St. Francis, he sailed for Mexico in 1749 and spent two decades evangelizing in the Sierra Gorda before being sent north into the unmapped territory of California.

From 1769 until his death he founded the first nine of California’s Franciscan missions, traveling thousands of miles on a leg left chronically ulcerated and lame. He learned the languages of the native peoples, baptized thousands, and repeatedly confronted Spanish military officers over their abuses of the indigenous, drafting a bill of rights for the mission Indians that he carried himself to the viceroy in Mexico City.

Serra’s legacy is both honored and contested: the mission system he built brought the faith but also disease, forced labor, and the unraveling of native cultures, and his canonization by Pope Francis in 2015 — the first to take place on United States soil — was met with both celebration and lament. The Church holds him up as a tireless apostle whose motto was "siempre adelante," always forward, while calling for honest remembrance of those who suffered.