Sainthood for Father Serra?

As an artist/sculptor and lay student of Father Junipero Serra and California history, as well as the history of the Southwest, I must protest the protesting by present-day Indians.

I submit that they have less knowledge of the times in which Father Serra lived than those of us who wish to see this brave little Franciscan canonized. Those times are long vanished and the critics most probably have not studied the history of their mission forebears nor are their memories that long.

What today may be considered “cruel and unusual punishment” was in Serra’s time considered fair and just. At the time, those Indians who came to the missions and were there converted to Christianity, were elevated from the lowest form of digger Indian, living in a state of semi-starvation, with no concept of an orderly society in which there was work as well as play and worship.

The love of Serra for the Indians was as a father to his children and they in turn loved him deeply, as history will attest. When punishment was meted out it was generaly for misconduct as regarded the sexual practices of the Indians and the soldiery or for such infractions as stealing and murder. Christians believe in punishment for the breaking of the commandments to this day, I do believe!

Having just completed a small bronze piece of Father Serra and an in-depth study of his life and teachings, it is my belief that no man ever lived a more saintly life than he. Nor did the Indians of that time ever have it so good as they did under the mission system. The reader may think I say these things because I am of the Catholic faith, but this is not the case. I am a Protestant whose admiration for Junipero Serra is grounded in history.

LOIS E. RUMOHR

Arcadia