Is The Pope Trying To Redeem Colonialism Analysis

When Pope Francis decided to canonize the Franciscan friar named Junipero Serra in September on the pope’s first to the United States, he knew that there would be controversy surrounding his decision. Father Serra was a friar who helped the Spanish mission in California settle and helped to convert the native population to Catholicism. However, the controversy comes from the way in which the friars and the missions went about converting the natives and the way in which they treated them is extremely controversial. Many native Californians were slaughtered and killed by the Spanish upon their arrival. Junipero Serra is one of the reasons for the collapse of the Native population in California, many believed that he treated the natives very …show more content…
Once the natives were included into the missions, their lives were changed forever . As Emma Green discussed the idea of Junipero Serra becoming a saint with Steven Hackel , a history professor at University of California, in her article, entitled “Is the Pope Trying to Redeem Colonialism?”, Hackel says “ With missions came terrible diseases and population decline in two ways: elevated mortality…. And a reduction in fertility among women because of STDs.” He goes on to say about this notion “ Living year-round in the missions was a big adjustment from the tribes’ normal custom of moving periodically around the countryside. Once Indians were baptized, they were expected to live a Catholic lifestyle.” The lives of the Natives were anything above slaves in the American colonies on the east coast of America. As Andrew Gamble writes in a Guardian article entitled “ Junipero Serra’s Brutal Story in Spotlight as Pope Prepares for Canonisation” saying “ Indians brought into the missions were not allowed to leave, and if they tried they were shackled and severely beaten.” He further illustrates the brutality of the missions when he writes “ They were used as forced labor, to build out the Mission’s farming projects. They were fed atrociously, separated from their family members and packed into tight living quarters that often became …show more content…
Throughout many sources and articles he has been given high praise by religious figures, government officials and normal citizens. Many correspondents with Serra and his colleagues show that he cared deeply about the natives and was applauded by the treatment of the natives by the soldiers as one letter to the governor of California in 1780 Father Serra wrote “ I am willing to admit that in the infliction of the punishment we are now discussing, there may have been inequalities and excesses on the part of some Fathers and that we are all exposed to err in that regard.” In this quote we see that later in Father Serra’s life he has come to realize that possibly the ways in which the missions inflicted punishment onto the natives. We see a growth in his thinking as he matured. There are more and more people today that look past the wrongs that Father Serra did and look more at the good in which he did. He settled California and educated thousands of native peoples. He also lived his life to the full Christian values that he so desired too. As the current professor at California State University Ruben Mendoza comments on Father Serra saying “ Father Serra was not only a man of his time, he was a man ahead of his time in his advocacy for native people on the frontier.” He acknowledges the wrongs the Serra did but he goes on to say “