The Subject which has been assigned to me by the Academy of American Franciscan History as my contribution to the homage being rendered to this illustrious son of Mallorca, would require a very lengthy paper if it were to be treated with the amplitude which it deserves. But the restricted limits of a conference such as this, as well as the multiple pastoral duties of my episcopal office, impose upon me a brevity which will reduce this study to a few brush-strokes which, though modest, indicate the relation between Fray Junípero Serra and his fatherland.

Over the Sea of Odysseus and of Columbus with sunrise-gilded sails, a ship with a saint aboard voyaged toward America. He was an island saint, with the compass of his heart pointing north, his vision directed toward the America which on the planisphere was still depicted as surrounded by seamonsters and dotted with Indian cities where men lived in misery, naked in a Paradise wherein the wolf of Gubbio had taken refuge.

Padre Junípero Serra, O.FM., Apostle of California and candidate for sainthood, is a many-sided personality. His reputation for sanctity alone has caused one of the greatest research projects in Spanish mission history in this century. His activity as an empire-builder and administrator is a fascinating theme for many writers. Best known as an apostolic missionary among the Indians, he was also a penetrating professor and a much-sought preacher. It would be impossible, even in a more extended paper, to consider every facet of the personality and all the interests of the apostolate—ranging from mail routes to mission methods—of this remarkable, dynamic man. His writings include the whole gamut of existence from rocks to the Holy Trinity. He moved as easily on the frontier as in the classroom. Though he aspired to high sanctity, he could remain quite human, even indulging in an occasional pleasantry.

The Mission, so fundamental in the transformation of colonial Hispanic America, has been characterized as the “kingpin” in Spain’s New World frontier system. The culminating stage in the evolution of the mission system, as well as the final fling of Spain’s “aggressive-defensive” in America, is to be found in Alta California. For the missionary sons of St. Francis, the achievements of their Fernandinos on our present Southwest Pacific slope constituted a fitting installment in a long series of “spiritual and temporal conquests.” During the sixty-five years between 1769 and 1834, over 80,000 Indians appear to have been baptized by the Franciscans in California. These savages were not only converted to Christianity, but also, in greater or lesser degree, habituated to Christian practices and morality, civilized, agriculturalized, industrialized and Hispanicized. This despite the fact that the California natives were described as a heterogeneous lot of culturally destitute, peripheral peoples, among the most backward and abject of American red men. For the Franciscans, the Gospel and whatsoever might be necessary thereto must be taught to every human creature. The distinguished lineage of mission methods in California may be traced back to the Sierra Gorda and southern Texas, to the plains of Paraguay and the jungles of Brazil, and—still further—to the labors of missionary monks among the rude barbarians of early medieval Europe.

It is a Great Honor for one who lives in the Wild West to be asked to speak in the cultured capital of our country, for California is remote. In fact, it came into history as “the most outlandish place in the World,” and in some quarters so it is still regarded. A wealthy Italian Duchess, in the seventeenth century, told her Father Confessor that she wished to endow a mission for the heathen. Being asked where she wished it established, she replied, “In the most outlandish place in all the world.” The Jesuits consulted their geography and concluded that the most outlandish place in all the world was California, and there the mission was founded. Father Kino had a long correspondence with the same Duchess, and for their letters the Huntington Library, a few years ago, paid $18,000. Bigger sums have been paid for letters written to a lady, but seldom for letters written to a lady by a Jesuit priest.