
Vandals Deface Junipero Serra Mission
On Monday morning, red paint was found splattered on the door of the Santa Cruz Mission, with graffiti accusing Father Junipero Serra of genocide painted on the walls.

On Monday morning, red paint was found splattered on the door of the Santa Cruz Mission, with graffiti accusing Father Junipero Serra of genocide painted on the walls.

On Thursday morning, the Juniperro Serra statue at Lower Presidio Park in Monterey was found decapitated.

The canonization of Fray Junipero Serra should have been a rallying cry for the Left. Pope Francis has given America its first saint–a man who dedicated his life to bringing Christianity to the native peoples of California. Many Native Americans see Serra as a conquerer who used violence to impose a religion. They have, selectively, spoken up, but the silence on the part of mainstream left media and white liberals is deafening.

On Wednesday afternoon, Pope Francis canonized Father Junípero Serra, a Franciscan friar who founded a chain of Catholic missions up and down the coast of California, each of which would become a major Californian city, such as San Diego, Santa Clara. and San Francisco.

The Pope’s visit to the United States will include Wednesday’s plan to perform the first canonization on U.S. soil; the act will make controversial Spanish Franciscan priest Junipero Serra a saint.

Central San Joaquin Valley faith leaders and families, thrilled that Pope Francis will visit the United States next Tuesday, have launched celebrations in anticipation of the event.

This week, Gov. Jerry Brown, who was once a Jesuit seminarian, asserted that he will block California legislators from attempting to replace the statue of Father Junípero Serra in the National Statuary Hall Collection on Capitol Hill with a statue of astronaut Sally Ride.

California Governor Jerry Brown will take his utopian foreign policy to the Vatican to participate this week in an environmental summit hosted by Pope Francis. Despite California’s majority Democrats’ intention to banish celebrations of Catholic missionary Father Junipero Serra’s accomplishments, Brown will carry a state resolution supporting Pope Francis’ recent draft “Encyclical on Climate Change.”

On Tuesday, the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media, a California State Assembly committee, approved Senate Joint Resolution 4, a bill endorsing the replacement of the statue of Father Junipero Serra in the National Statuary Hall Collection on Capitol Hill with a statue of astronaut Sally Ride.

On Saturday, Pope Francis, doubling down on the Vatican’s decision to canonize controversial Father Junipero Serra next September. Francis delivered a homily to an audience at Rome’s American seminary, the Pontifical North American College, in which he said that Serra was “one of the founding fathers of the United States.”

A largely partisan state Senate debate between Democrats and Republicans ended Monday with a decision to replace the statue of Father Junipero Serra in Washington, D.C.’s National Statuary Hall Collection with a statue of NASA astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space and an acknowledged lesbian. The resolution needed 21 votes to pass; the final tally was 22-10.

Parishioners praying Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday were confronted by one dozen demonstrators protesting the Pope’s decision to canonize Father Junipero Serra.

The question of whether to canonize or not to canonize Father Junipero Serra has raged now that Pope Francis has decided to nominate Serra for sainthood. The dichotomy among Californians triggered by Serra’s nomination springs from significantly different viewpoints.

In a surprise announcement on his plane trip to Manila Thursday, Pope Francis said that he is planning to canonize the founder of California’s first missions and the father of the California wine industry when he visits the US next fall.