WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Canonizing the 18th-century Spanish missionary, Blessed Junipero Serra, Pope Francis insisted a person's faith is alive only when it is shared.
Celebrating a late afternoon Mass outside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Sept. 23, the pope declared the holiness of St. Junipero, founder of a string of missions in California.
Some people had objected to the canonization -- like the beatification of the Spaniard in 1988 -- because of questions about how Father Serra treated the native peoples of California and about the impact of Spanish colonization on native peoples throughout the Americas.
Pope Francis mentioned the controversy only briefly, saying: "Junipero sought to defend the dignity of the native community, to protect it from those who had mistreated and abused it. Mistreatment and wrongs, which today still trouble us, especially because of the hurt which they cause in the lives of many people."
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