Savior Or Villain? The Complicated Story Of Pope Francis' Next Saint
When Pope Francis travels to the U.S. later this month, he'll give 18th-century Spanish priest Junipero Serra the Catholic Church's highest honor: sainthood. But for many Native Americans in California, sainthood for Father Serra isn't a slam dunk.
In the late 1700s, Serra helped Spain colonize California by converting tens of thousands of Native Americans to Catholicism. For many of their descendants, he's the man responsible for destroying their ancestors' traditional way of life.
Serra arrived in San Diego in 1769, charged by the Catholic Church with "Christianizing" and "hispanicizing" the native population on behalf of the Spanish crown. He did that within the mission system: self-contained residential complexes where Indians would live, work and worship under the authority of Spanish priests and soldiers. Serra founded nine missions along the coast of California before his death in 1784. Twelve more were erected after his death.
A reproduction of a print of two Indians walking toward Mission Dolores in the 1800s, on display at Mission Dolores.
Locals ended up in the missions for a number of reasons. Many came looking for food; the Spanish colonizers brought with them nonnative animals that ate plants and berries crucial to the ecosystem that Native Americans depended on, leaving starvation in their wake. The priests were known to lure people into the mission with gifts. Young men from neighboring areas were also rounded up by Spanish soldiers for agricultural and construction work. However people arrived, they were invariably forced to stay in the missions and adopt Spanish ways of life, stripped of their tribal languages and cultural identities and gradually known as "Mission Indians."
"People were enslaved in the missions," says Vincent Medina, 28, assistant museum director at San Francisco's famed Mission Dolores. "They were whipped if they spoke their language. If they tried to escape, they were forcibly brought back, flogged and punished, and kept in stocks. People were getting diseases. They were horrible places to be."
The Mission San Francisco de Asis was founded on June 29, 1776, and is commonly known as Mission Dolores. It is the oldest building in San Francisco and was under the direction of Father Junipero Serra.
When Medina leads tours of Mission Dolores, he points out the ceiling of the old adobe church on the mission grounds that was erected in 1791 and is still in use. Two rows of pews line the narrow space, and the wall behind where the priest resides at worship bears figurines of saints and lots of gold flare in over-the-top Baroque grandeur. But the ceiling looks totally different, painted geometrically in red, yellow and gray in what Medina says is a traditional basket-weave pattern. "It shows how my ancestors factored their culture into this building that they were essentially forced to make," he says.
Medina is a descendant of Mission Indians from Mission San Jose in Fremont, as is his boss, Andrew Galvan, museum director at Mission Dolores. They're distant cousins who didn't know one another until six years ago when their work around Mission Indian cultural restoration brought them together. They're the only descendants of Mission Indians hired by the Catholic Church in this capacity at any of California's 21 missions.
The interior of Mission Dolores, showing the ceiling from the front door to the back wall, painted in a traditional basket-weave pattern, while the walls are painted in a Baroque style, covered in saints and gold.
Galvan and Medina were both raised knowing they were Mission Indians from the Ohlone tribe of the northern and central California coast. Spanish priests kept records of marriages, burials and baptisms at the missions, and the pair recently discovered that they share ancestors at Mission Dolores, too: a married couple named Jocbocme and Poylemja.
"There's a certain something about knowing you belong," says Galvan. "I know my great-great-great-grandfather was buried at Mission San Jose, but now I know that his parents, their bones, are right here in this cemetery, so I belong here." More than 5,000 Indians are buried at Mission Dolores in unmarked graves, something Galvan wants rectified so other descendants of Mission Indians can know where they "belong."
Galvan has been the museum director here for more than a decade and had a simple wooden grave marker placed in the cemetery to acknowledge Jocbocme and Poylemja. He placed a tule house directly across from the grave marker, a hut made of dry reeds like the kind Ohlone families slept in before the arrival of Father Serra and his mission system.
Graves and a tule house (Ohlone families slept in these before the arrival of missionaries) in the Mission Dolores cemetery.
In a way, that tule house facing that wooden grave marker represents the conflicted emotions many descendants of Mission Indians feel toward Father Serra. When they lead tours of Mission Dolores, Galvan and Medina begin at this spot to help visitors understand that their ancestors were most likely forced to live here, but also that because they lived here, Galvan and Medina have a link to their history through the records and burial spot at Mission Dolores.
Medina and Galvan are both practicing Catholics. Despite the way their ancestors were introduced to this religion, both feel it is an inextricable part of who they are today. They say they're just like millions of other Catholics whose history with the church is colored by colonialism. But unlike Medina, Galvan takes it a step further: He has an unwavering belief that Junipero Serra loved the Mission Indians and wanted the best for them, which, at that time, meant accepting the Gospel. He's been fighting for Serra's sainthood for as long as Medina has been alive.
Andrew Galvan, director of Mission Dolores, has been fighting for Junipero Serra's sainthood for as long as assistant curator, Vincent Medina, has been alive. Medina doesn't think Serra deserves that promotion.
"In my eyes, he's a saint," says Galvan, matter-of-factly. If all goes according to plan, Pope Francis will confer sainthood on Serra in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 23. It's a day Galvan has been waiting for and Medina is dreading.
"To be a saint is the highest you can be in the Catholic Church, for a human being. And I can't support it because lots of the effects of the missions are being felt by Ohlone people even today," says Medina. "He just doesn't deserve that promotion."
He brings up the loss of countless cultural traditions: basket weaving, spiritual ceremonies, and language. Medina spent years trying to relearn his ancestral language, Chochenyo, from old recordings.
Galvan doesn't blame Junipero Serra for those losses. He blames a colonial system that was predicated on the total assimilation of California's Indians to the Spanish way of life. "He is a person of that time — it is not correct to judge him by our standards," says Galvan.
So, how can they work together day in and day out? Galvan says good scholarship means listening to both sides of a point, and he's sure he and Medina agree on more of what happened at a California mission than what they disagree on. They agree that the mission system could be brutal, but that it's also the strongest link to their ancestral past, their history.
A sculpture of Junipero Serra in the Mission Dolores cemetery.
Medina wants some of the things that were taken away to be returned. He wants the missions to offer language classes and basketry, and traditional ceremonies to be performed alongside the Catholic faith. He's hoping the spotlight on Father Junipero Serra's sainthood can, at the very least, help make that happen.
"If we can take something that I perceive as being negative, channel that frustration into some good, then ultimately we all win in the end, you know?" says Medina. "Andy gets his saints. I get Indians in the Mission."
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Transcript
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Pope Francis is hugely popular among Catholics in the U.S. Still, his visit this month will not be without controversy. That's because the pope plans to make the priest Junipero Serra a saint. In the late 1700s, Father Serra helped Spain colonize what is now California. He oversaw the conversion of tens of thousands of local Indians to Catholicism. And many were coerced into building a string of missions Father Serra was establishing along the California coast. Today, descendents of those Mission Indians are still grappling with the priest's legacy. From our Code Switch team, NPR's Shereen Marisol Meraji has more.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, BYLINE: San Francisco's Mission District is now known as the urban playground for Silicon Valley tech geeks, but its name comes from the Catholic mission established more than two centuries ago under Father Junipero Serra. Today, what's left is the simple adobe church and cemetery where 5,700 Indians from various California tribes are buried, mostly in unmarked graves.
ANDREW GALVAN: My name is Andrew Galvan.
VINCENT MEDINA: OK, my name is Vincent Medina.
GALVAN: Here at Mission Dolores in San Francisco, and we're standing in our cemetery.
MEDINA: Standing next to the grave marker of my...
MEDINA AND GALVAN: (In unison) Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
MERAJI: Sixty-year-old Andrew Galvin is the museum director of Mission Dolores in San Francisco. He's responsible for planning exhibits and hiring tour guides, like 28-year-old Vincent Medina, his assistant now. They're Ohlone, a tribe from the northern and central California coast, and they met six years ago through their individual work around Mission Indian cultural restoration. It turns out they're cousins who can trace their roots to a married couple buried here in the early 1800s.
MEDINA: Jocbocme and Poylemja...
GALVAN: Who were baptized at Mission Dolores, had their wedding at Mission Dolores, their funerals inside the church.
MEDINA: And they're both from villages very close to here.
MERAJI: Galvan, who's been the museum director for more than a decade, had a simple wooden grave marker placed in the cemetery to acknowledge his ancestors. He put a tule house directly across from it. The shelter looks like a hut made of dry reeds stacked next to and on top of each other. Ohlone families slept in them before the arrival of Father Serra and his mission system. Galvan says this is where he and Medina start all of their tours, between the tule house and their ancestors' grave marker, in a cemetery filled with gravestones for Spanish and Mexican Catholics.
GALVAN: Because what we want to do is talk about them and their journey to the mission, and then we talk about the recreated Indian dwelling that we have here for interpretive purposes. Then we move into the mission. It's the same transition our ancestors made, so we take the visitor through that transition.
MERAJI: They are the only descendants of Mission Indians hired to do this work in any of the 21 California Missions. And Medina makes sure visitors on his guided tours understand that transition Galvan's talking about that tens of thousands of Indians up and down the coast of California underwent was rough.
MEDINA: People were enslaved in the missions. They were whipped if they spoke their language. Girls who were unwed were locked in dorms that were filthy. People, if they tried to escape, were forcibly brought back and flogged and punished, kept in stocks. People were starving. People were getting diseases. They were horrible places to be.
MERAJI: But both Galvan and Medina say they're living proof that their people survived this abuse and persevered. They learned to adapt to the Spanish ways and, later, the Mexican ways and then the Anglo ways. But they were able to keep a piece of the old ways because their ancestors left cultural clues behind.
GALVAN: This is our sanctuary, the most sacred space, where the altar table is, where the priest presides at worship.
MERAJI: Galvan, Medina and I are standing at the front of the narrow adobe church. Behind us is a baroque wall filled with saints and painted with lots of gold flare. But if you look up at the ceiling in front of you, you start thinking, one of these things is not like the others. The geometric pattern is intricate, and its straight lines are in direct contrast to the fancy swirls of the baroque art beneath it.
MEDINA: So the entire ceiling from the front door to the back wall is painted in what is a traditional basket weave pattern. And to me, also, it shows how my ancestors - they were still going to factor their own culture into this building that they were being forced, essentially, to make.
MERAJI: Even though they know their people were forced and coerced into Catholicism, Medina and Galvan are both practicing Catholics. They say it's a part of their cultural traditions now, that lots of people's history with the church is colored by colonialism, and they're still Catholic. But Galvan takes it even further with his unwavering belief that Junipero Serra loved Indians and wanted the best for them, which, at that time, he says, meant accepting the gospel. He's been fighting for Serra's sainthood for as long as Medina has been alive.
GALVAN: In my eyes, he's a saint. In the official documents of the church on the afternoon of September 23, Pope Francis will be reading the formula that declares him a saint in Washington, D.C.
MERAJI: A day Galvan has been waiting for and Medina is dreading.
MEDINA: To be a saint is the highest you can be in the Catholic Church for a human being. He just doesn't deserve that promotion, like, for me. Like, that's, like, why it's upsetting. And to me, I can't - I just can't support it because a lot of the effects of the missions are still being felt by Ohlone people even today.
MERAJI: He mentions the loss of cultural traditions - basket weaving, spiritual ceremonies and language. Medina spent years trying to relearn his ancestral language, Chochenyo, from old recordings. But Galvan doesn't blame Junipero Serra for those losses. He blames the colonial system.
GALVAN: He is a person of that time. It is not correct to judge him by our standards.
MEDINA: I can't support the canonization because of that. I just - yeah, I just can't.
MERAJI: How do you work with him every day, then?
MEDINA: Well, Andy would often say good scholarship is listening to the other side.
GALVAN: That's exactly what I was going to say. Good scholarship is listening to both sides of a point because, in many ways, Vincent and I agree more on what happened at a California mission than what we disagree on.
MERAJI: They agreed that the mission system could be brutal, but it's also the strongest link to their ancestral past, their history. Vincent Medina wants some of the things that were taken away returned. He wants the missions to offer language classes and basketry, to be a place where traditional ceremonies can be performed right alongside the Catholic faith. And he's hoping the spotlight on Farther Junipero Serra's sainthood can help make that happen.
MEDINA: If we can take something that I perceive as being negative, channel that frustration into some good, then, ultimately, we win in the end. We all win, you know? Andy gets his saints. I get Indians in the mission.
MERAJI: Shereen Marisol Meraji, NPR News, San Francisco. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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