Blessed Junipero Serra (1713-84)

Franciscan Friar, missionary and founder of missions in California. He was the son of Antonio Nadal Serra and Margarita Rosa Ferrer and was born at Petra, Majorca, Spain on Nov. 24^th, 1713. He was baptized on the same day in St. Peter’s Church and given the name Miguel Jose. He was confirmed at the age of two by the bishop of Palma. He received his primary education at a school conducted by Franciscans at the friary of of San Bernardino.  When he was fifteen he was placed in charge of the canons of the cathedral in Palma and began to assist in Philosophy classes held in the Franciscan San Francisco Monastery.  Thus in his early life was deeply influenced by the Franciscans who were his teachers.

Young Friar-On Sept. 14^th, 1730 at the age of 16 he became a novice at Convento de Jesus located near Palma and made his profession the following year on Sept. 15.  At his profession he chose the name Junipero, in memory of one of St. Francis Assisi’s first companions.

The young friar studied philosophy from 1731-1734 followed by four years of theology at Convento de San Francisco.  The date of his ordination is not known but it was probably occurred in Dec. of 1738.  The year following his ordination he served as friary librarian but began to teach philosophy in the fall of 1740 for three years at San Francisco.  He earned his doctorate in theology in 1742 from Lullian University in Palma and was called to the Scotistic chair of theology at the university in Jan. of 1744.  He had the reputation of being an excellent teacher and highly sought after preacher, renowned for his pulpit style and religious zeal.  But his local fame did not quench his thirst to be a missionary.  This was granted to him in 1749.

Missionary in America-On April 13, accompanied by his formal pupil Francisco Palou, who would later write the first biography of Serra, the companions sailed from Palma to America by way of Malaga and Cadiz.  After a perilous voyage, Vera Crux, Mexico was reached on Dec. 7, 1749. Refusing the horses offered to him, they walked 250 miles to teach Mexico City and arrived at San Fernando College on Jan. 1, 1750.

Six months later Serra and Palou answered a call for volunteers to administer to the Sierra Gorda missions. Together they walked 175 miles to Jalpan, the principal mission station that served the Pame natives. For the ensuing eight years he labored to enhance and enlarge missions under his care, mastering the Otomi language. The Sierra missions prospered and he became a champion of native rights against obstinate white abuse.

He Sept., 1758, he was summoned to San Fernando College in anticipation of being transferred to the San Saba missions in Texas which had suffered from violent attacks from the indigenous people.  The posting never came about so he stayed at the college until 1767, where he was choir director, college counselor, and confessor and Holy Office of the Inquisition, which dated back to 1752 when he was first assigned the post.

As a home missionary Serra immediately was immensely active in preaching missions in numerous areas of central Mexico, ranging from Oaxaca in the south to Valles in the north.  He was appointed to the presidency of the ex-Jesuit missions in Baja California that were placed in the hands of the Franciscans after the Jesuit expulsion from the Spanish dominions.  He took up his new post at Loreto on April 1, 1768.

The California Missions-Acting on the orders of Jose de Galvez, visitor general to New Spain (Mexico), the exploration and settlement of Alta Californina was to be implemented.  Serra volunteered to undertake the evangelization of the new territory even though not in the best of health.  Galavez accepted and the Franciscans were granted Alta California as their mission field.

He set out on Mar. 27, 1769, from Loreto to join the expedition led by Captain Gaspar de Portola and arrived in San Diego on July 1.  En route Serra established his first mission at San Fernando de Velicata on May 14, 1769. The journey was difficult for him because he suffered from varicose ulcers in his legs, which caused him acute pain, but was not deterred by his infirmities in his quest for native converts.

In the ensuing 15yrs of his life, Serra labored without surcease in his Alta California apostolate. He founded nine missions: San Diego, July 16, 1769; San Carlos at Monterey, June 3, 1770; San Antonio, July 14, 1771; San Gabriel, Sept. 8, 1771, San Louis Obispo, Sept. 1, 1772, San Francisco, Oct. 12, 1777’ San Juan Capistrano, Nov. 1, 1776; Santa Clara, Jan. 12, 1777 and San Buenaventura, Mar 31, 1782.  At the same time, the founding of the first civilian settlements at San Jose, Nov. 29, 1777 and Los Angeles, Sept. 4, 1781 were effected.

During his apostolate, Serra traveled extensively in Alta, California administering to the native peoples and his fellow Franciscans.  His travels included major trips to Mexico city to plead for the rights of the neophytes under his care as president of California’s mission. This trip resulted in the famed Regulamento of 1773 that provided for the governance of the new province issued by Viceroy Bucareli.  Plagued by his varicose ulcers and asthma attacks he labored tirelessly in his efforts to bring Christianity to California’s native people.

By the time of his death at Mission San Carlos, Aug. 28, 1784, the nine California missions he had founded reported a total of 6,736 baptisms and 4, 646 Christian Native Americans living in the missions. He remained a model for religious despite his distractions and activity – a man of prayer and mortification. He had a consuming love for the Indians and ever defended them.  He was considered a man of saintly qualities during his life.  His cause for beatification was introduced in the diocese of Montery-Fresno in 1934 and was completed in 1949.  The Sacred Congregation of Rites declared Serra Venerable on Feb. 15, 1985. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on Sept. 25, 1988.

Document written by Juniperra Serra-Junipero Serra Makes His Final Report on the Mission of San Carlos De Monterey, July 1, 1784.

Hail Jesus, Mary and Joseph! “On the Most Solemn Feast of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost Sunday, June 3, 1770, this mission of San Carlos de Monterey was founded to the joy of the sea and land expeditions. In a short time rejoicing was shared by the entire kingdom and eagerly celebrated in both Spains.The following day, after choosing the most likely spot on that plain, the construction of the presidio was enthusiastically begun by the men of both sea and land forces.  By the fourteenth of the same month, the most solemn feast of Corpus Chirsti, a chapel had been built, as well as it could be, at the spot of the presidio which it still occupies, and a high Mass was sung with the Blessed Sacrament exposed in its monstrance.  After the Mass there was a procession, in which His Sacramental Majesty passed over the ground that till then had been so heathen and miserable.  It was a day of great consolation for all of us who were Christians.”

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917)

Missionary and saint.  The first American citizen to be canonized a saint (1946).  Mother Cabrini came to the US in 1889 to help Italian immigrants.  She died at Chicago in 1917.  Together with her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a religious community she had founded in Italy in 1880, Mother Cabrini established a network of educational, health care and social service institutions and programs for Italians across the United States.

Early Life-

Maria Francesca Cabrini was born in 1850 at Sant’ Angelo Lodiginano in the province of Lombardy in northern Italy.  From infancy she experienced delicate health and remained frail throughout her life.  Her father, a prosperous farmer, was able to provide a good education for his children.  In 1868 she became a licensed public education teacher.  Third Order Franciscan and active laywoman in parish ministry, she held in heart a dream to become a religious sister and a missionary to the Orient.

She realized part of her dream in 1880 when she established a new sisterhood dedicated to the missions. Mother Cabrini relinquished her desire to evangelize to the east when urged by Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini of Piacenzaa to go to the aid of the Italian immigrants in America, and mandated to do so by Pope Leo XIII who knew the needs of those who had gone West to the US to build new lives in a new land.

New York-On Mar. 31, 1889, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini and six missionary Sister companions arrived in Manhattan. The first works entrusted to them included an orphanage for daughters of Italian immigrants and ministry among poor Italians in St. Joachim’s Parish. Hearts aflame with love, she and her sisters cared for the poor orphans and began religious instruction for children and adults in the parish.  They also visited poor families in their homes, the sick in hospitals and the incarcerated in city jails.  Elementary education was started in the orphanage and the parish.   Additional sisters were called to help in the works.  An American novitiate was soon opened in West Park, New York.  New York city became the site of the first of Cabrini’s Columbus Hospitals, intended primarily for immigrants but opened to all nationalities.  It was also in New York that she took on the administration of additional parochial schools and industrial schools, where embroidery and other practical arts were taught.  She and her sisters assumed responsibilities for religious societies for boys and girls, retreats for women and begging expeditions among the poor to provide the wherewithal for the works on their behalf.

Missionary to America-

Mother Cabrini was not one to stay put.  Determined to be a bearer of the love of Christ to mankind despite a strong fear of water growing out of a near drowning accident as a child, would in her lifetime undertake twenty-three ocean voyages to Europe, North, Central, and South America bringing the Good News of God’s love to those in need.  Her main focus of attention was, however, the United States of America and her nine missionary journeys to the USA were marked by prodigious accomplishments on behalf of her beloved immigrants.  After New York, the outreach went to New Orleans, which followed a lynching of eleven Italian men.  They gave courageous service to two yellow fever epidemics, set up an orphanage and schools and visited immigrants in rural Louisiana.   In response to pleas from Italian clergy, parish schools were opened in Newark, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.  With fathers becoming victims in coal mining accidents while mothers were succumbed to tuberculosis, orphanages were set up in Denver, Arlington, New Jersey, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.

Additional hospitals were opened in Chicago and Seattle and included outpatient dispensaries and training for nurses.  To generate income for the medical care of the poor, private facilities were furnished for paying patients. Sisters assigned to the hospitals, like those associated with schools and orphanages, took on catechetics in Italian parishes and visited Italian prisoners.  Mother Cabrini made frequent visits to all of her foundations in the United States and paid careful attention to the details of administration and the expansion of facilities.

Education of the Heart-

While responsible for healthcare, childcare and social service institutions, Mother Cabrini remained first and foremost educator. Her philosophy of education was based on pedagogy of love.  Her profound religious faith gave her vitality to her educational ideals. All education was to be God-centered.  She adopted a holistic approach to education, advocating instruction in science, math, art, language, sports etc.  She did not separate intellectual education from what she termed “education of the heart”.  She characterized this by stating, “feeling for God in an environment of affective relationships in which education becomes an act of love.”  She wanted both her sisters and lay teachers to speak not just of values but to create an environment of love.  She was also an advocate to a degree for bilingual education. While English was to be a basis of all instruction, some time was devoted to learning to read and write in Italian. She wanted to give them a deeper sense of their cultural heritage.

Evangelization-

The institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was founded to spread the reign of Jesus Christ by means of evangelization, which Mother Cabrini saw as inflaming all those with whom they came in contact with the love of Christ.  Italian immigrants who had little instruction in their faith were prepared for the sacraments of penance, Holy Communion, and Confirmation. Those who knew their faith were gently evangelized.  They encouraged baptism of children, regularizations of marriage in their church and the return to the practice of the Catholic religion. The sisters bought clothing, groceries for the poor and helped the unemployed to obtain jobs. They became advocates among the immigrants.

Later Life, Death and Glory-

During her years in the United States, Mother Cabrini extended her contacts throughout the country with members of the American clergy, hierarchy, civil leaders, and Italian American Communities, where she was much loved.  She took pride in the fact that graduates of her schools and orphanages were making their way in life.

Mother Cabrini brought hope and help to those in many countries, but her greatest achievements, and the ones for which history will remember her, are her pioneering missionary works among the Italian immigrants in the United States.

Following exhaustive Vatican processes of beatification and canonization, Mother Cabrini was declared Blessed on Nov. 13, 1938, only twenty-one years after her demise at Columbus Hospital, Chicago, and July 7, 1946, she became the first United States citizen to become a saint.  In 1950 Pope Pius XII formerly proclaimed St. Frances Xavier Cabrini the “Patroness of Immigrants.”

Related Resources

Mother Cabrini – Missionary to the World In 1946, Francesca Cabrini was canonized as the first saint of the United States. This “Vision Book” for 9 – 15 year olds tells the exciting story of this missionary from Italy who came to America to spread the Faith. She founded a new order nuns, the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, to teach the Faith and work with the poor in our country. She was a tireless missionary who crossed the ocean 37 times to expand her order across the world to France, England, Spain; in Central and South America; in the United States from coast to coast including New York, New Orleans, Denver, Seattle (where she took the oath of U.S. citizenship) and Chicago, where she died in 1917, a saint of our time. Illustrated. See also: See our entire Vision Books Series. Saints of the Church – Teacher’s Guide / Vision Books

St. René Goupil

Jesuit missionary; born 1607, in Anjou; martyred in New York State, 23 September, 1642.

Health preventing him from joining the Society regularly, he volunteered to serve it gratis in Canada, as a donné. After working two years as a surgeon in the hospitals of Quebec, he started (1642) for the Huron mission with Father Jogues, whose constant companion and disciple he remained until death. Captured by the Iroquois near lake St. Peter, he resignedly accepted his fate. Like the other captives, he was beaten, his nails torn out, and his finger-joints cut off. On the thirteen days’ journey to the Iroquois country, he suffered from heat, hunger, and blows, his wounds festering and swarming with worms. Meeting half way a band of two hundred warriors, he was forced to march between their double ranks and almost beaten to death.

Goupil might have escaped, but he stayed with Jogues. At Ossernenon, on the Mohawk, he was greeted with jeers, threats, and blows, and Goupil’s face was so scarred that Jogues applied to him the words of Isaias (liii, 2) prophesying the disfigurement of Christ. He survived the fresh tortures inflicted on him at Andagaron, a neighbouring village, and, unable to instruct his captors in the faith, he taught the children the sign of the cross.

This was the cause of his death. returning one evening to the village with Jogues, he was felled to the ground by a hatchet-blow from an Indian, and he expired invoking the name of Jesus. He was the first of the order in the Canadian missions to suffer martyrdom. He had previously bound himself to the Society by the religious vows pronounced in the presence of Father Jogues, who calls him in his letters “an angel of innocence and a martyr of Jesus Christ.”

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852)

Religious Missionary and Saint.  Born on Aug. 29, 1769, in Grenoble, France, she was the second of eight children of Pierre-Francois Duchesne and Rose Euphrosine Perier. Her parents both came from well to do bourgeois clans active in mercantile and political affairs in the French Province of Dauphine.

The family was composed of fervent Catholics.  Five of the six sisters would become visitation sisters.  Her father although had ties with the Church eventually became a freethinker and devotee of the Enlightenment.  Her mother remained a devoted Catholic and sought to preserve it in the hearts of her children.

Religious in France-

During a two-year period starting in 1781 she spent time with the Visitandines of Grenoble in preparation for her first Communion, she felt the stirrings of a religious vocation.  Her family opposed her idea of a vocation, so she waited until 1788 before entering religious life.  During this period she developed a desire to be a missionary in America.

The Grenoble Visitation was unaffected by the revolutionary decree of Feb. 13, 1790, banning all monastic orders in France.  Religious women were exempt from the order especially if the did works of charity.  The exemption was revoked on Aug. 18, 1792 by the government and all women’s religious orders were abolished.

With the closing of her convent, Philippine returned to her family.  At the country home she attempted to maintain the essence of the Visitation Rule with her cousin, Julie, who was a Visitation nun as well.  Philippine returned to Grenoble during the height of the terror to organize works of charity for the poor, as well as to offer material and spiritual support to priests in prison or in hiding.  She and her helpers would be called “Ladies of Mercy.”

Still listening to the call of religious life, she attempted to join Visitandines in exile.  The group at nearby St. Marcellin was headed by her own aunt, Mother Claire-Euphrsoine Duchesne, but her attachment to them proved short-lived.  After a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Francis Regis at LaLouvesc in 1800, she resolved to dedicate her life to the teaching of the poor.  In 1801 she arranged to rent her former monastery at Ste-Marie-d’en-Haunt and reintroduce the Visitation rule.  This ended two years later because of dissension in the community.

The four remaining nuns adopted a new name “Daughters of the Propagation of the Faith” on Mar. 3, 1803, and the following year sought admission into the Society of the Sacred Heart, founded in 1800 by Madeleine-Sophie Barat.  Mother Baret, herself acted as mistress of novices and the Ste-Marie-d’en-Haunt became the second foundation of the new community and was transferred into the novitiate.  In Jan. of 1805, the first of Mother Duchesne’s first request to serve in the American missions would be denied by Mother Barat.From 1805 to 1815. Mother Duchesne bore the responsibility for the convent school at Grenoble and had the role of mistress general as well.  In 1815 Rome adopted the Constitution and rule of the Society of the Sacred Heart and the society’s second council named her secretary general with residence in Paris .

Missionary in America-The year 1817 saw the visit to France of Louis DuBourg, bishop of Louisiana and the two-Floridas.  Because of the urgent plea for missionaries and a personal meeting between the bishop and Mother Barat, permission was obtained for Mother Duchesne and her first nuns to go to America.  After spending 10 weeks at sea, the missionaries landed in the US on May 25 in 1818.  They stayed with the Ursulines at New Orleans for several weeks before heading by boat to St. Louis.  The bishop ordered that the sisters take up residence at St. Charles Missouri.  He bishop wanted the sisters to set up school for local white children.  After traveling this great distance, Mother Duchesne, was frustrated in her immediate desire to work among the native peoples of the Mississippi River valley.

During the first decade in the New World, she suffered all the extremes of physical deprivation that the frontier had to offer.  Finances and difficulty from her family and Mother Barat compounded her worries.  After a year long stay at St. Charles, the convent school was moved to Florissant, Missouri.  The fall of 1820 witnessed the first American vocation into the society. The bishop asked her to set up a foundation in Louisiana in 1821 near Opelousas.

Mother Duchesne served as superior to the sisters in the Mississippi valley and possessed authority to buy or sell property on behalf of the society, to start new foundations, appoint religious personnel anywhere in the world, yet important executive decisions were still made by Mother Barat in France.  By the close of the 1820’s there were six institutions in the US, staffed 64 religious, educating more than 350 students.  Fourteen of the religious were from France will fifty were American born sisters.

On Nov. 30, 1831, Mother Barat acceded to Duchesne’s request and relieved her of her duties as superior in America.  Bishop Rosati of St. Louis disagreed with the decision and caused Mother Duchesne to remain in office. In 1834 she returned to St. Charles from Florissant. With the arrival of Mother Elizabeth Galitzin, visitrix, in the fall of 1840, Mother Duschesne would be relieved of her duties as superior.  She assumed residence in the society’s “city house” in St. Louis with the only seniority being that of her years of profession.  Here she would have spent her declining years except for a happy convergence of opinions.

Missionary to the Native Americans-

After Pope Gregory XVII urged the society to engage in missionary activity among the Native Americans, three sisters were appointed to this task.  Due to her advanced years, Mother Duchesne was not chosen.  The quick intercession of her Jesuit friend, Fr. Peter Verhaegen, called Mother Duschesne to be included.  There destination was a Potawatomi village at Sugar Creek, Kansas, inhabited by a people who had formerly lived in Michigan, but who had been displaced by the federal government.  A significant number of the tribe had embraced Catholicism yet, much work remained for the sisters and the Jesuit fathers.

Mother Duchesne arrived in Sugar Creek in July of 1841. Her age, her inability to master the Native tongue, and her ill health, combined to limit her material support she could offer to the missionary effort.  She spent long hours nursing sick tribe members and the  reputation of  her sanctity grew.  The Potawatatomi would christen her “Quah-Kah-Ka-num-ad” or “woman who prays always”, in honor of her extensive periods of time she spent kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament.  Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Blessed Sacrament had always indeed constituted the essence of her spirituality. Her habit of keeping lengthy night vigils before the tabernacle had long ago been noticed by her sisters, who furthermore marveled that these extended sessions of prayer and their attendant lost hours of sleep, in no way impeded Mother Duchesne’s daytime energy.

Her evangelical poverty was also legendary.  Her repeated patched habit and veil served as a sign of her renunciation of the riches of this world.  No false dignity prevented her from embracing the most arduous of manual labor.

With the arrival of Mother Galitzin, the Sugar Creek mission on Palm Sunday 1842 marked the beginning of the end of Mother Duchesne’s work among the Potawatomi. Mother Galitzin deemed Mother Duchesne to be too elderly and frail to continue to live at the village and decreed that she return back to St. Louis.  She died Nov. 18, 1852 having attained her eighty-third year.

Mother Duchesne’s remains were interred in the community cemetery at St. Charles.  After lying in the ground for three years, encased in a plain wooden coffin, her body was exhumed in preparation for the reburial in a recently constructed oratory.  The corpse was found to be incorrupt at this time, although later it succumbed to the laws of nature.  Mother Rose Duchesne was beatified May 12, 1940 and on July 3, 1988 was pronounced a saint of the Church by Pope John Paul II.  Her feastday occurs on the anniversary of her death on Nov. 18.

Some of this information was taken from:Cruz, Joan Carroll, Incorruptibles. Rockford, IL: Tan, 1977 Fr. Albert H. Ledoux.