Deepertruth: Saint Junipero Serra “Always forward, never back”

 Saint Junipero Serra “Always forward, never back”

Feast Day July 1

He is patron saint of vocations to Church ministry, and he played an instrumental role in building the Church on the west coast of America when that area was still mission territory.

Junipero Serra was an 18th-century Spanish missionary who is as responsible as anyone else for establishing the Catholic presence in colonial California.

Serra died in 1794, and the one miracle Church authorities have confidently declared he performed was in 1960, when a nun in St. Louis was cured of a mystery disease, thought to be lupus, after having prayed to him on her deathbed.

In 1776, when the American Revolution was beginning in the east, another part of the future United States was being born in California. That year a gray-robed Franciscan founded Mission San Juan Capistrano, now famous for its annually returning swallows. San Juan was the seventh of nine missions established under the direction of this indomitable Spaniard.

His travels would have circled the globe. He brought the Native Americans not only the gift of faith but also a decent standard of living. He won their love, as witnessed especially by their grief at his death. He is buried at Mission San Carlo Borromeo, Carmel, and was beatified in 1988. Pope Francis canonized him in Washington, D.C., on September 23, 2015.