When Pope Francis canonizes Father Junipero Serra on Wednesday at an outdoor mass at Catholic University of America, at least some American Indians will be plenty sore.

Serra was a Spanish Franciscan priest who came to this land during the revolutionary ferment of the American founding. He is considered by many to be a founder not only of California but, according to Pope Francis, a founder of America. Indeed, so enthusiastic was Serra for the Revolutionary War, it is reported he took a collection of $137 and sent it to General George Washington.

Serra spent much of his life building a network of mission Churches up and down what is now the state of California, then known as Alta California. Serra founded nine of the 21 California missions, including San Juan Capistrano where the swallows used to return every year but largely stopped coming in the past thirty years. Along the way, many Indian tribesmen converted to Christianity, and Serra helped put the stamp of Christianity on what would eventually become a part of the United States.

Various Indian pressure groups charge Serra with inspiring a kind of genocide of Indian culture and widely mistreating the Indians who came under his care in the mission churches. Ron Andrade, executive director of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, compared Serra to Hitler. He told The Guardian that Serra “decimated 90% of the Indian Population.” However, Dr. Steven Hackel of the University of California, and one of Serra’s biographers, says, “It was a very difficult time for California Indians” because of the Spanish colonization, and the missions were “a place for them to rebuild their communities.”

Read the article “Pope Francis to Canonize Spanish Priest Some Indians Compare to Hitler” on breitbart.com.