July 1st – Saint of the Day: Saint Junipero Serra, Franciscan Missionary Priest & Friar

The Friar Who Could Not Be Stopped

Picture a slightly built man, barely five feet two inches tall, limping through the sun-scorched hills of California on a leg that has been chronically infected for years. He refuses to stop. He refuses to turn back. He is carrying the Gospel of Jesus Christ to thousands of people who have never heard His name, and nothing, not illness, not physical pain, not hostile military commanders, not the vast and uncharted wilderness, is going to make him quit. That man is Saint Junípero Serra, and his story is one of the most remarkable in the entire history of Catholic missionary work.

Saint Junípero Serra is known as the Apostle of California, and with very good reason. He founded nine of the twenty-one Franciscan missions that would eventually stretch along the California coast, missions that became the seeds of some of the greatest cities in the United States today. He walked approximately 24,000 miles in service of the Gospel, most of it on a wounded leg he refused to treat. He baptized more than 6,000 people and confirmed over 5,000 more. He is the patron saint of California, Hispanic Americans, and religious vocations, and he was canonized by Pope Francis on September 23, 2015, in the first canonization ever performed on American soil.

His motto says everything you need to know about the man: Siempre adelante, nunca atrás. “Always forward, never back.” That was not just a saying for Serra. That was how he lived every single day of his life from the moment he set foot in the New World until the morning he was found lying peacefully in his cell with his crucifix clasped on his chest.

From a Farming Village to the Heights of Faith

The story begins on November 24, 1713, in the small village of Petra on the Spanish island of Majorca in the Mediterranean Sea. Antonio Nadal Serra and his wife Margarita Rosa Ferrer were simple, deeply Catholic farmers, and on the very day their son was born, they carried him to the church of Saint Peter and had him baptized. They named him Miguel José.

From his earliest years, young Miguel was drawn to the nearby Franciscan church and school where the friars recognized his exceptional gifts almost immediately. He was bright, serious, deeply devout, and he had a natural gift for learning that set him apart from the other children in the village. When he was around fifteen, his parents took him to Palma, the capital of Majorca, so that he could pursue his education more seriously. He began studying philosophy at the Franciscan monastery of San Francisco, and within a very short time, he made a decision that would change the trajectory of his entire life.

On September 14, 1730, at the age of sixteen, Miguel José entered the Franciscan novitiate. When he made his religious profession the following year, he chose a new name: Junípero, in honor of Brother Juniper, one of the first and most beloved companions of Saint Francis of Assisi. Brother Juniper was celebrated throughout the Franciscan tradition for his radical humility, his generosity, and his joyful simplicity. It was a name that fit something deep in the young friar’s character from the very beginning.

What followed was a period of intense study and formation. Serra was ordained to the priesthood around December of 1738, and by 1742 he had earned a doctorate in theology from the prestigious Lullian University in Palma. This was no small achievement. He was subsequently appointed to the Duns Scotus Chair of Philosophy at the university, the highest academic honor the faculty could bestow. His fame as a scholar and as a preacher was spreading across the island. He was eloquent, fiery, and deeply compelling in the pulpit. A comfortable and distinguished life in the academy was entirely within his reach.

And then God called him somewhere else.

It was the writings of Franciscan missionaries to the New World that set Serra’s heart on fire. He began to feel, with increasing urgency, that God was calling him not to lecture halls and universities but to the frontier, to the people who had never heard the name of Jesus Christ. He petitioned his superiors for permission to go to the Americas as a missionary, and on April 13, 1749, Serra and his closest friend and former student, Father Francisco Palóu, set sail for the New World.

On the night before he left the friary for the last time, Serra kissed the feet of every brother Franciscan in the community, from the eldest to the youngest. It was a gesture of profound Franciscan humility and love. He would never see his family again. He would never return to Majorca. He was thirty-five years old, and his real life as a missionary was just beginning.

Walking on a Wounded Leg

Serra arrived at the port of Veracruz on December 7, 1749. Horses were provided for the missionaries to make the 250-mile journey to Mexico City, but Serra refused them. Following the example of Saint Francis of Assisi, who taught his brothers to walk rather than ride whenever possible, Serra and one companion set off on foot along the rough and dangerous Camino Real. During the journey, an insect bit his left leg. The wound became severely infected and never fully healed. For the remaining thirty-five years of his life, Serra carried that wound with him on every step of his journey, refusing most medical treatment and offering his suffering to God in a spirit of Franciscan mortification.

When he arrived on the outskirts of Mexico City, he stopped first at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe to pray and dedicate his mission work to her before presenting himself at the College of San Fernando on January 1, 1750.

His first assignment was to the Sierra Gorda missions in central Mexico, near Querétaro, where he would spend nine extraordinary years among the Pame people. Serra approached them with patience, genuine love, and a respect that was rare for the time. He learned their language. He translated the Catechism into Pame. He taught them farming techniques and how to raise livestock. He did not simply preach at them from a distance. He lived among them as a brother. The Sierra Gorda missions he oversaw during this period are today recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which tells you something about the depth and permanence of the work he and his fellow Franciscans accomplished there.

From 1758 onward, Serra walked all over Mexico as a roving missionary preacher. He preached in seaports, in crude mining camps, in refined colonial cities. His sermons were electric. People came in great crowds to hear him. His holiness was evident to everyone around him, and his zeal for souls was absolutely relentless.

Then came California.

In 1767, the King of Spain expelled the Jesuit Order from all his territories, and the Franciscans were called in to take over the Baja California missions. Serra was appointed their superior. Then, in 1768, the Spanish Crown ordered expeditions into Alta California to establish missions and presidios before the Russians or the British could claim the territory. Serra volunteered immediately to join the expedition of Governor Gaspar de Portolá.

He was fifty-five years old at the time, suffering from asthma and a leg wound that had plagued him for nearly two decades. By any clinical measure, he was in no condition to undertake such a journey. But when the question of his health came up, Serra wrote these words in his diary:

“For I trust that God will give me the strength to reach San Diego, as He has given me the strength to come so far. In case He does not, I will conform myself to His most holy will. Even though I should die on the way, I shall not turn back. They can bury me wherever they wish and I shall gladly be left among the pagans, if it be the will of God.”

He pressed on. On July 16, 1769, Father Junípero Serra founded the first mission in Alta California: Mission San Diego de Alcalá. He raised a cross, sang a High Mass, and set about the great work that would occupy the rest of his life. Over the next fifteen years, he founded eight more missions along the California coast, each spaced roughly a day’s walk apart, connected by the dusty road that became El Camino Real. Those missions became the hearts of communities that would grow into some of the most famous cities in America. San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Clara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura all trace their origins directly to the mission chain that Serra built.

Serra moved his headquarters to Mission Carmel in 1771, deliberately choosing a site some distance from the military presidio at Monterey. He wanted physical and symbolic separation between the Church and the military, and he wanted the Native Americans in his care to see clearly that the mission was not simply an arm of the Spanish colonial government. From Carmel, he made repeated visitation journeys up and down the entire chain of missions, traveling mostly on foot, supervising the work of his brother Franciscans, preaching, baptizing, administering the sacraments, and pouring himself out in service to the people he had come to love as his own children.

In 1778, the Holy See granted Serra a remarkable privilege: the authority to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation, a power normally reserved to bishops. Serra used it with extraordinary energy. In a final circuit of all nine missions during the last years of his life, despite his age and failing health, he confirmed 5,039 people while traveling more than 600 miles.

He described the mission Indians in a letter to Viceroy Teodoro de Croix with these words: “They are our children, for none except we have birthed them in Christ. The result is, we look upon them as a father looks upon his family.”

The Cost of Faithfulness

The story of Serra’s California years was not simply a triumphant march of evangelization. It was also a sustained battle on behalf of the very people he served, fought against the military commanders and colonial administrators who frequently abused the Native Americans within the mission system.

The physical suffering Serra endured throughout his California years was extraordinary by any measure. His infected leg caused him constant pain. He also suffered from serious respiratory problems, likely a combination of chronic asthma and what may have been early tuberculosis. Despite all of this, he refused to be carried or transported when he could possibly walk under his own power.

There is a story about this that has long been passed down through Franciscan tradition. When Serra’s leg was so swollen during the 1769 expedition that he genuinely could not put weight on it, he called over Juan Antonio Coronel, one of the mule drivers in the party, and asked him to treat the wound the way he would treat a sore on one of his animals, with a homemade poultice of herbs and tallow. The muleteer did so, somewhat bewildered by the request, and the next morning Serra was walking again. This story has been cherished in Catholic tradition as a sign of both Serra’s humility and God’s providential care for his servant, though it should be noted that it cannot be fully verified from historical documents and remains a beloved account preserved among his companions.

Serra’s most remarkable act of public advocacy came in 1773. Spanish soldiers stationed near the missions had been committing serious abuses against the Native Americans, including violent crimes against Native women near San Diego. The military governor, Pedro Fages, was either unwilling or unable to stop it. Serra lodged protest after protest, and was ignored. Finally, despite being gravely ill and despite the enormous physical cost involved, Serra undertook a journey of approximately 2,400 miles from Carmel to Mexico City to personally present his case to Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli.

Think carefully about what that journey meant for a man of his age, in his condition, traveling mostly on foot across some of the most rugged terrain in North America. He arrived at the vice-regal palace described by the Viceroy himself as “almost in a dying condition.” And yet, in that condition, Serra presented a remarkable 32-article document called the Representación, a comprehensive plan for reforming the governance of the California missions and protecting the rights of the Native Americans under Spanish law. The Viceroy was deeply moved. He wrote afterward, “I listened to him with the greatest pleasure. I realized the apostolic zeal that animated him.” Bucareli ruled in Serra’s favor on 30 of 32 points, removed the abusive governor from his position, and enacted the reforms Serra had proposed. Catholics have long regarded this document as the first significant legislation enacted for California.

Two years later, in 1775, a group of Native Americans attacked the San Diego mission, burned it to the ground, and killed one of Serra’s brother friars, Father Luis Jayme. It was a devastating blow to the entire mission community. Twenty warriors were captured and sentenced to death. Serra immediately wrote to the Viceroy, invoking a request he had made years earlier: “In case the Indians, whether pagans or Christians, would kill me [or other friars], they should be pardoned.” The Viceroy honored the request, and the condemned men were set free. In this act of extraordinary mercy, many Catholic commentators have recognized the unmistakable echo of Christ’s own words from the Cross: Father, forgive them.

The Friar Who Fell Asleep in God

By 1784, Serra was seventy years old and his body was finally giving out. He was suffering from what is believed to have been tuberculosis, along with all his other long-standing ailments. His dearest friend in the world, Father Francisco Palóu, traveled to Mission Carmel to be with him at the end.

The final hours of Serra’s life were a testimony to everything he had ever believed and taught. The day before he died, he rose at dawn to recite the Divine Office, then made his way to the mission church, slowly and painfully, to receive Holy Communion. He refused to receive the Blessed Sacrament lying in bed while he could still walk to the altar. When he returned to his cell, he spent the day in prayer. Father Palóu heard his general confession. Serra asked his friend to recite the prayers for the dying, then lay down to rest. When Palóu returned to check on him a short while later, he found Serra lying peacefully in his bed with his crucifix clasped on his chest. He had died as quietly as if he had simply fallen asleep.

August 28, 1784. The Feast of Saint Augustine. Serra was gone.

When the Native Americans of the surrounding area heard the news, they came from near and far to mourn. They wept openly. They gathered around the body of the man who had been their father in faith. Some cut locks of his hair to keep as relics. They followed the coffin to the church. Serra was buried beneath the sanctuary floor of Mission Carmel, beside his longtime companion Father Juan Crespí, in the church he had built, among the people he had loved. He asked for no other monument.

The miracles attributed to Serra’s intercession after his death are central to the story of his path to sainthood. The cause for his beatification was formally opened in 1934 in the Diocese of Monterey-Fresno, and over the decades that followed, numerous cases were submitted to the Vatican for consideration as potential miracles. The one miracle that was formally approved for his beatification took place in 1960. A Franciscan nun in St. Louis, Missouri, Sister Mary Boniface Dyrda, was dying of systemic lupus erythematosus. Her community of sisters, at the suggestion of a Franciscan priest and Serra biographer, began praying together for Serra’s intercession. Sister Mary recovered completely and inexplicably. When Vatican officials later asked her what had happened, her answer was as simple and direct as any healing story in the Gospels: “I don’t know what happened. They told me I was dying, I asked them to pray to Serra, and here I am.” Medical experts and theologians examined the case carefully and found no natural explanation for her recovery. Pope John Paul II proclaimed the healing miraculous, and on September 25, 1988, he beatified Junípero Serra at the Vatican, calling him the Apostle of California and the defender of the Native Americans.

When it came time for full canonization, something unusual happened. Normally, two verified miracles are required for canonization. Pope Francis, during his first pastoral visit to the United States, made the decision to waive the second miracle requirement using a prerogative available to the Pope known as equipollent canonization. He declared that the breadth and depth of popular veneration of Serra across two centuries, combined with the evidence of his heroic virtue throughout his life, constituted sufficient grounds to proceed. On September 23, 2015, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., Pope Francis canonized Junípero Serra in the first canonization ever performed on American soil.

At the canonization Mass, Pope Francis spoke these words about the new saint: “Junípero sought to defend the dignity of the native community, to protect it from those who had mistreated and abused it.” He also described Serra as “the embodiment of a Church which goes forth, a Church which sets out to bring everywhere the reconciling tenderness of God.”

Notably, two members of California’s Ohlone Tribe participated actively in the canonization Mass itself. One placed a relic of Serra near the altar. The other read a passage of Scripture in Chochenyo, a Native language. Father James Nieblas, the first Native American priest to be ordained from the Juaneño Acjachemen Nation, a tribe evangelized directly by Serra, was chosen to meet personally with Pope Francis during the papal visit. He had stated publicly for years that “Father Serra brought our people to this day.”

The physical remains of Saint Junípero Serra rest beneath the sanctuary floor of Mission Carmel in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where they have lain since the morning of his burial. The church built around that grave has become a place of active pilgrimage and veneration for Catholics from around the world. In 1987, one year before the beatification, Pope John Paul II visited Mission Carmel and laid flowers on Serra’s grave with his own hands. In 2015, Serra’s personal Caravaca Cross, the one he carried from Majorca and which was found clasped on his chest when his body was exhumed in 1943, was taken to the Vatican and blessed by Pope Francis before being returned to the mission for permanent veneration.

The cultural legacy of Saint Junípero Serra in America is immense and deeply Catholic. Serra International, a global lay Catholic organization dedicated to fostering vocations to the priesthood and religious life, was founded in his honor in 1935 and now has over 20,000 members in 44 countries. A bronze statue of Serra stands in the National Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol, chosen by California as one of its two great historical representatives. He appears on the postage stamps of five nations, including both Spain and the United States. The cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Clara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura all trace their origins to the mission chain that Serra built. The Catholic Church in California, which today includes two archdioceses and ten dioceses, and whose Catholics represent over 32 percent of the state’s population, grew from those nine humble missions that one limping friar established along the coast.

His feast day is celebrated on July 1 in the United States as an Optional Memorial and on August 28 universally.

Always Forward

What does it mean to live with that kind of relentless forward motion in your faith? The life of Saint Junípero Serra is, at its heart, a story about what happens when a person takes the call of God seriously and refuses to let anything stop them from answering it. Not comfort. Not career success. Not physical suffering. Not hostile authorities. Not the threat of death. Nothing.

Serra was not a perfect man, and the Catholic Church does not claim that canonization means someone lived a flawless life. What canonization means is that this person loved God heroically, that their life was a credible witness to the transforming power of grace, and that they are with God in heaven right now, interceding for the rest of us. Serra’s canonization is the Church saying clearly: this is what it looks like when someone takes the Gospel all the way.

The lesson that stands out most powerfully from Serra’s life is the lesson of Siempre adelante. Always forward. When his leg was infected, he walked. When the military governor was corrupt, he walked 2,400 miles to tell the Viceroy about it. When a friar was murdered, he walked the path of forgiveness. When he was seventy years old and dying, he walked to the altar to receive Holy Communion rather than receive it lying in bed. The forward motion never stopped, because the love that powered it never stopped.

Where in your own life is God calling you to keep walking when everything in you wants to stop? This is the question Serra’s life poses to every Catholic who encounters his story. It is one thing to start well in the faith. It is another thing entirely to keep going when the road is hard, when the wound will not heal, when the results are slow in coming, when you are tired and far from home and everything familiar has been left behind.

The second great lesson is the lesson of advocacy for the vulnerable. Serra fought for the rights of the Native Americans at a time when the colonial system treated them as expendable. He did this not because it was politically safe or personally advantageous, but because he genuinely loved them as children of God and as his brothers and sisters in Christ. Who are the vulnerable in your own community whom God might be calling you to speak up for, even at personal cost?

The third great lesson is the lesson of prayer as the foundation of action. Serra prayed from midnight until dawn during his California years, and his companion friars documented this consistently. His tremendous outward energy and his enormous practical accomplishments were fed by an interior life of extraordinary depth. Without that root, the fruit simply would not have come.

Serra once wrote home to console his parents when he departed for the New World, telling them through a friend: “I wish I could give them some of the happiness that is mine. Tell them that the dignity of Apostolic Preacher, especially when united with the actual duty, is the highest vocation they could have wished for me to follow.”

That happiness was real. It was not the happiness of comfort or ease or worldly success. It was the happiness of a soul that had found its purpose and had given itself entirely to that purpose in love. That is the happiness God holds out to every person, in the particular vocation each soul has been given. Serra found his. The invitation is open for every single one of us to find ours.

Engage With Us!

There is so much richness in the life of Saint Junípero Serra, and it would be wonderful to hear how his story resonates with you. Please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and reflections in the comments below. Here are a few questions to help get the conversation going:

Serra walked away from a prestigious academic career at the height of his success to follow God’s call to the mission field. Has there ever been a moment in your life when God called you to leave something comfortable or familiar behind, and how did you respond?
Serra’s motto was “Always forward, never back.” What does that phrase mean to you personally, and where in your life do you feel God inviting you to keep moving forward even when it is difficult?
Serra interceded for the warriors who killed his brother friar and asked the Viceroy to pardon them. Is there someone in your life whom you have found it difficult to forgive, and how does Serra’s example of radical mercy speak to you in that situation?
Serra traveled 2,400 miles, while gravely ill, to defend the rights of people who had no power to defend themselves. What does his example of courageous advocacy challenge you to do in your own community or family?
What one virtue from Serra’s life do you most want to cultivate in your own walk of faith this year, and what is one concrete step you can take this week to begin?

Keep going. Keep praying. Keep walking forward, even when the road is long and the leg is sore, because that is exactly what the saints did, and it is exactly what God is asking of every one of us today. May Saint Junípero Serra pray for you, for your family, and for all those whose souls you carry in your heart. And may the love and mercy of Jesus Christ, which Serra gave everything to proclaim, be your light and your strength every single day.

Saint Junípero Serra, pray for us!

Holy Manna!