Vatican defends canonization of founder of Californian missions

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican on Monday defended Pope Francis's decision to canonize Junipero Serra, the 18th-century Spanish Franciscan priest who founded missions in California, against accusations that he brutalised Native Americans.

 

Francis is due to declare Serra a saint on Sept. 23 at the National Shrine in Washington during a trip to the United States that will also include stops in New York and Philadelphia.

 

Critics say Serra, who arrived in what is now California in the 1760s, beat and imprisoned Native Americans, suppressed their cultures, and facilitated the spread of diseases that decimated the population.

 

"He was a man of his times," Father Criscuolo, a Franciscan from the Vatican department for the causes of saints, told reporters at a briefing.

 

Criscuolo said corporal punishment was commonly used as an educational tool at the time, particularly by Spaniards, but rejected accusations from some Native Americans that in Serra's case it amounted to genocide.

 

"It (corporal punishment) can't be excluded but it certainly was not genocide," he said at a briefing before a ceremony in honour of Serra planned for May 2 at the American seminary in Rome. It will be attended by the pope.

 

Criscuolo said there were many examples of Serra intervening with Spanish authorities in defence of Native Americans.

 

Guzman Carriquiry, a member of the Vatican's commission for Latin America and a personal friend of the pope, criticised a recent vote by the California state senate to remove a statue of Serra from the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington.

 

"They want to remove the only Hispanic there, exactly when the first Hispanic pope in history will canonise him. That would not be an extraordinary welcome in a land that puts itself forward as an example of multi-cultural tolerance," he said.

 

Francis made the surprise announcement last January that he would make Serra a saint during his trip to the United States in September.

 

Serra was beatified, the last step before sainthood, by the late Pope John Paul in 1988 after a miracle was attributed to him. Pope Francis waived Roman Catholic Church rules that required another miracle before bestowing sainthood.  — Reuters