Where Is St. Junípero Serra? Mystery Over Missing Freeway Landmark
California transportation officials say the Serra statue failed program standards; Archbishop Cordileone says Catholics were shut out of the decision.
California transportation officials say the Serra statue failed program standards; Archbishop Cordileone says Catholics were shut out of the decision.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s account flatly contradicts the California Department of Transport’s narrative; no response from state agency.
COMMENTARY: Mobs bent on erasing US history in California have focused their ire on the saintly Spanish missionary.
‘Serra Walking Pilgrimage’ highlights devotion to ‘Apostle of California.’
The document is not only an artifact of California history but also a second-class relic, as Serra was canonized in 2015, making him one of only 11 North American saints.
A decade after his canonization, St. Junípero Serra remains a powerful symbol of evangelization, resilience and spiritual renewal across the Americas.
“Everything he did, from the time he was a boy, was to promote the Catholic Church.”
In a July 5 statement, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento said that while “the group’s actions may have been meant to draw attention to the sorrowful, angry memories over California’s past,” their “act of vandalism does little to build the future.”
One can learn a lot about how to be an evangelizer from the great Apostle of California
St. Junipero Serra, the archbishops noted, traveled 2,000 miles to Mexico City when he was aged and infirm “to demand that authorities adopt a native bill of rights he had written.”
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