Father Serra

Re Daood Moosa's March 28 letter accusing Father Serra of "converting Indians . . . by pouring boiling water" on them: In reality, Junipero Serra did more for the California Indians than anyone in thousands of years. He brought civilization to Stone Age tribes who had not yet invented the wheel. He brought agriculture, a written language, permanent housing and the skills to prosper at many trades, all while treating them as humans worthy of conversion and intermarriage, unlike the English colonial approach.

It's a scholastic rite of passage for every California fourth-grader: studying the history of the Spanish Catholic missions and the life of Father Junípero Serra. Steven W. Hackel remembers the drill. "We were taught that Father Serra was a good, gentle padre who built missions every one-day's horseback ride apart for tired travelers, as sort of like Motel 6's of the day," says Hackel, a UC Riverside associate professor of history and author of a new biography of Serra. "And there was nothing about Indians in those missions at all. " Finding the complex man of God wrapped inside the saintly myth and putting the missing indigenous Americans back into the picture, are lead objectives of an exhibition scheduled to open Aug. 17 at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens and run through Jan. 6. PHOTOS: Junipero Serra exhibition Titled "Junípero Serra and the Legacies of the California Missions" and co-curated by Hackel and Catherine Gudis, also a UC Riverside associate professor of history, it's perhaps the most comprehensive exhibition ever assembled about the devout Franciscan friar who established nine of the 21 missions in present-day California and is sometimes called the state's "founding father.

Mark I. Pinsky's front-page article (March 28), "To Many Indians, Serra Was No Saint," struck an open wound. As one of 200,000-plus California Indians (14% of all U.S. Indians), and one of 80,000 in the Los Angeles area, and as an 18-year veteran of Catholic education, I believe that Father Junipero Serra was no saint. Father Serra was a leader in enslaving and decimating California Indians in the name of Christ. Religious manipulation was the key ingredient of the Spanish conquest.

There's a time machine in San Juan Capistrano. It doesn't have glass dials or brass gauges marking decades past and future. It bears no on-off switch, no fancy wires. It will, nonetheless, transport you to a different time. "It's beautiful and serene," says Jim Graves, who has taken the trip many times. "There's a religious significance to it -- you feel the presence of God. It takes you to the beginnings of civilization and lifestyle as we know it in California."

Pope John Paul II on Friday approved the beatification of 18th-Century missionary Father Junipero Serra, advancing the controversial "apostle of California" one step closer to sainthood. The papal action endorsed a formal finding last week by Vatican investigators that Serra's intercession was responsible for curing an American nun of a serious neurological disorder.

He gazes into the distance, this life-size bronze statue of Mission San Juan Capistrano founder Father Junipero Serra, dedicated this week at the mission church. What he might be seeing is the future, which holds another 20 bronze replicas of the Catholic priest, and would bring to 50 the number of Serra statues donated by multimillionaire developer William Hannon.

Picture a small band of missionaries, camped under the cathedral of the stars on the site of what would become the first church in Upper California. Since California Chardonnay had yet to be invented, perhaps a jug of non-vintage Spanish red would be passed from hand to hand while a flute picked out a simple Castilian melody chosen from the era's Top 40.

Father Junipero Serra has cleared the last procedural hurdle to beatification, the second of three steps to sainthood, according to Father Noel F. Moholy, Serra's chief backer in the United States. The Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints decided Tuesday morning that a St. Louis nun was cured of a serious neurological disorder 27 years ago as a result of the intercession of Serra, who is known as "the Apostle of California," said Moholy, a San Francisco priest. Msgr.

A priest who has worked for decades to persuade the Roman Catholic Church to make Father Junipero Serra a saint believes he has found a medical miracle that could canonize the founder of California's missions. But a scoliosis specialist said Thursday that he doubts Mary Schlientz was miraculously cured of curvature of the spine. And one of her doctors thinks modern medicine was more responsible than prayers to Father Serra.

We were in rugged, barren country with awe-inspiring views. The terrain and vegetation seemed to change each time we rounded a curve or drove through a valley. We had entered the Sierra Gorda, a remote chain of mountains in northern Queretaro state. It is a region of steep mountain ridges, deep canyons and ravines, along with the only cloud forests in central Mexico. There are jaguars, black bears, river otters, spider monkeys and nearly 400 species of birds.

Jeff Kaiser, Ventura's stalwart champion of improvised and experimental music, turned 40 recently and put on a birthday bash in suitable style. The public was invited, and they showed up in droves to Ventura City Hall for two hours of uncharted and often inspiring sounds. The tall wooden statue of Padre Serra in the atrium seemed to stand over the proceedings like a sentry who looked a bit suspicious of the mayhem unfolding.

Father Jerome Tupa is not a missionary, but he understands the urgency of a mission. As a Benedictine monk at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., he belongs to a Catholic order that emphasizes prayer and work within a religious community. During an artistic pilgrimage to all of California's 21 missions, he began to appreciate the work of his long-ago fellow traveler, Father Junipero Serra, the Franciscan who launched the building of these churches, starting in 1769.

Whatever the reviews of his work in California--and they run from "saintly" to "genocidal"--in his hometown of Petra on the Spanish island of Majorca, Junipero Serra is the local boy who left home and made very, very good. Here Father Serra began the odyssey that has put him in line for Catholic sainthood. The plaque at the church where he was baptized boasts broadly of the native son as "explorer, missionary, hero, civilizer of the lands of California."

Re Daood Moosa's March 28 letter accusing Father Serra of "converting Indians . . . by pouring boiling water" on them: In reality, Junipero Serra did more for the California Indians than anyone in thousands of years. He brought civilization to Stone Age tribes who had not yet invented the wheel. He brought agriculture, a written language, permanent housing and the skills to prosper at many trades, all while treating them as humans worthy of conversion and intermarriage, unlike the English colonial approach.

Re "Road To Remembrance" (April 12): As a Californian whose family helped to establish missions, pueblos and presidios during the infancy of a land that was to emerge as California, I must urge that the name of Ortega Highway remain as a historical landmark to this particular part of the state. I was born and raised in California, where my family first set roots when then-Sgt. Jose Francisco Ortega was sent as scout for the Father Serra/Portola expeditionary force. The purpose of going north was to ensure Spanish control of this West Coast.

In her Oct. 26 column ("On the Verge of Sainthood"), Patt Morrison quotes Father Noel Moholy, who is pushing for Father Serra's sainthood, as stating that Native American opposition to his sainthood is "bunkum." Having taught Native American history for 20 years at a California community college, I can assure you that opposition to Father Serra's sainthood is based on documented evidence. It shows that a majority of the California Indians were forced to do slave labor for the Spaniards and converted to Catholicism with no understanding of the religion since they did not speak Spanish.