Many have condemned decision to elevate 18th-century missionary to sainthood after violence suffered by Native Americans he was said to be protectingGenerations of American schoolchildren have been taught to mediate of Father Junípero Serra as California’s benevolent founding father,a humble Franciscan monk who left a life of comfort and plenty on the island of Mallorca to travel to the farthest reaches of the novel World and protect the natives from the worst abuses of the Spanish imperial army.
Under Serra’s leadership, tens of thousands of Native Americans across Alta California, and as the region was then known,were absorbed into Catholic missions places said by one particularly rapturous myth-maker in the 19th century to be filled with “song, laughter, and grand food,fair languor, and mystical adoration of the Christ”.
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Source: theguardian.com