Defining Blessed Junípero Serra as a “working-class missionary,” Archbishop José H. Gómez of Los Angeles said the 18th-century Franciscan deserves to be made a saint and to have his record as a defender of native peoples made known. Pope Francis’ announcement that he will canonize Blessed Serra in September “has opened old wounds and revived bitter memories about the treatment of Native Americans during the colonial and missionary period of America’s history,” the archbishop said. Speaking on May 2 at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, Archbishop Gómez said the legacy of Blessed Serra, who founded nine California missions, has been “distorted” by “anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda.” He added, “It is clear that Pope Francis—the first pope from the New World—understands the Christian roots of the Americas and the continent’s importance for the church’s mission in the 21st century.”
Defending Serra
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In this episode of Inside the Vatican, Colleen Dulle and Gerard O’Connell discuss the 2025 Jubilee Year, beginning on Christmas Eve 2024 and ending in January 2026.
Pope Francis prayed that the Jubilee Year may become “a season of hope” and reconciliation in a world at war and suffering humanitarian crises as he opened the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve.
‘If God can visit us, even when our hearts seem like a lowly manger, we can truly say: Hope is not dead; hope is alive and it embraces our lives forever!’
Inspired by his friend and mentor Henri Nouwen, Metropolitan Borys Gudziak, leader of Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S., invites listeners in his Christmas Eve homily to approach the manger with renewed awe and openness.