By Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone
On July 4, 1776, American leaders gathered in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence, which firmly rooted our human rights in what we Catholics call the “natural law,” as a gift from our Creator and not from our government: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It was a great moment of grace and as a country we rightly celebrate this year as America’s 250th birthday. But did you know that just a few days before this momentous event on the East Coast, something remarkable was also happening on the West Coast?
On June 29, 1776, St. Junipero Serra and his Franciscan brothers celebrated the very first Mass on the soil of what is now one of America’s and the world’s great cities: San Francisco, bringing the body and blood of Christ Himself to the Bay Area. Fray Francisco Palou was the principal celebrant of that Mass with St. Junipero Serra present.
And did you know that on Oct. 9, 1776, Mission Dolores was dedicated? Its proper name? Misión San Francisco de Asís. The year 2026 is thus not only the 250th anniversary of the United States and of the founding of Mission Dolores, it is the 250th birthday of the founding of the city of San Francisco.
The existing small adobe church of Mission Dolores was built by the Ohlone Indians who came to Christ through the mission work of St. Junipero Serra and his Franciscan brothers.
The Ohlone craftsmen built so well and so sturdily that Mission Dolores largely survived the Great Quake, becoming the oldest building in San Francisco and the oldest intact church nave in all of California.
They built so beautifully, lifting up elements of the local culture into a distinctly recognizable sacred pattern, that they and the other mission builders gave to America a style of Southwestern architecture that has enriched the lives of millions. Many of the descendants of these Ohlone builders, spiritual sons and daughters of St. Junipero Serra, still worship at Mission Dolores. One of them is Mission Dolores museum curator Andrew Galvan whose great-great-great-great-grandparents Faustino and Obulinda were California Indians who were baptized in the mission in 1794 and 1802, respectively, and who are buried in the mission cemetery.
Native Americans in California endured grave human rights abuses during all three eras: the Spanish colonization (known as the Mission era), the Mexican secularization and the American era. But St. Junipero Serra should not bear the weight of all that went wrong and all who did wrong. If we looked at him with clear eyes, we would see Serra as one of the first American champions of the human rights of Indigenous peoples.
St. Junipero Serra defended Indigenous people’s humanity, decried the abuse of Indigenous women by Spanish soldiers, and argued against imposing the death penalty on California Indians who had burned down a mission and murdered one of his friends. At age 60, ill and with a chronically sore leg, Serra walked 2,000 miles to Mexico City to demand that authorities adopt a Native bill of rights he had written. As Pope Francis said when he canonized him in 2015, Serra is not only the country’s first Hispanic saint but should be considered “one of the founding fathers of the United States.”
It was the Mexican government that took over the missions, took them away from the Indigenous peoples they were meant to benefit and gave them to politically favored groups. The genocide of Native peoples happened primarily during the Gold Rush, when as Santa Clara University historian Robert Senkewicz told the National Catholic Reporter, “Americans offered bounties for Indian scalps and the Native peoples of Northern California were brutally decimated and oppressed.”
In 1879, 45 years after the missions were secularized by the Mexican government and the Indians driven out, the great American author Robert Louis Stevenson visited the Carmel Mission on the feast day of the mission and wrote: “Padre Casanove will, I am sure, be the first to pardon and understand me when I say the old Gregorian singing preached a sermon more eloquent than his own. … An Indian, stone blind at about 80 years of age, conducts the singing. Other Indians compose the choir. Yet they have the Gregorian music at their finger ends and pronounce the Latin so correctly that I could follow the meaning as they sang. I have never seen faces more vividly lit up with joy than the faces of those Indian singers.”
These spiritual sons and daughters of St. Junipero Serra held onto their Catholic faith.
So, in 2026, we have a lot to celebrate and big plans for doing so, including the opening of new and improved museum exhibits at Mission Dolores in June, a thanksgiving service for civic leaders, and the celebration on Oct. 10 at the Basilica of Mission Dolores of Frank La Rocca’s great composition commissioned through the Benedict XVI Institute, the “Missa Sancti Juniperi Serra.”
Oct. 3, 2026, is also the 800th anniversary of the “transitus” (passing to the Lord) of St. Francis of Assisi, with ceremonies at the National Shrine to St. Francis in North Beach. The shrine has the only authorized replica of the Porziuncola, the fourth-century chapel to Our Lady of Angels that St. Francis chose as the mother church of the order he founded, which was also the place of his death.
Planning is underway among archdiocesan Catholic schools to visit these local historical Catholic sites, and some schools may be initiating student essay contests to build awareness and appreciation for Mission Dolores and to honor the special anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi.
Let us plan during the 250th anniversary of the founding of Mission Dolores to learn more, to pray more and to celebrate more the legacy of St. Junipero Serra and his sons and daughters in Christ among the Ohlone Indians.
St. Junipero Serra truly is the apostle and founding father of California. We are not yet a nation that lives up to our noble founding creed in the Declaration of Independence of liberty and justice for all. We can and must do better. That is precisely why we ought to look to Serra as an inspiration to heroic virtue and as an emblem of American diversity. His is the path to peace, equality and racial justice.
Father Junípero Serra died a beloved figure, mourned by Indigenous people and Spaniards alike as a symbol of reconciliation, of hope and of the profound love he bore toward the people he strove to serve. His life reminds us of a core tenet of the Catholic faith, that the spirit of poverty, service and simplicity is the way to peace. St. Junipero Serra came not to serve silver or gold, which he did not have, but to give the best gift of all: Jesus Christ and His saving good news.
This column was originally printed in the July 2025 Anniversary Issue of Catholic San Francisco magazine.
