Why Did the Pope Pick Junipero Serra?

In 1988, John Paul II beatified Junípero Serra (1713–1784), the Franciscan friar who founded California. Given the treatment of Native Americans under colonialism, some have questioned Serra’s prospective sainthood. On an episode of Firing Line in 1989, William F. Buckley Jr. hosted a discussion of the merits of the case. The exchange was predictably lively. One guest was Edward Castillo, a Cahuilla-Luiseño professor of Native American Studies at Sonoma State University, and a Serra critic. The other, Fr. Noel Moholy, was vice-postulator for the Serra cause. Buckley began by asking Castillo if he was “protesting the canonization of Junípero Serra in your capacity as a Christian or merely in your capacity as a Californian, or both?” Castillo, who had participated in the Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969, declared himself “a pagan.” To which Buckley responded, “But as the lawyers put it, you really have no standing, do you? That is to say, it’s none of your business who the church canonizes.”