Brutal munk made saint of California

Catholic “saint” Junipero Serra was a brutal missionary who enslaved native Americans.

This is the reaction of George Tinker on the occasion of Pope Francis making Franciscan munk Junipero Serra a “saint” of California.

Thinker is Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at Iliff School of Theology and author of Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Genocide.

Thinker reacts to the canonization of Junipero Serra done by Pope Francis during the present visit to the US. Thinker recalled the “almost slave-labor conditions” that Native Americans were subjected to under Serra’s leadership.

Credited with baptizing around 90,000 Indians during his lifetime, there is wide agreement among historians that Serra’s evangelism tactics were harsh by any modern standard.

Citing accounts from Serra’s own lieutenant, Tinker said the Franciscan priest prohibited converts from leaving his Christian compounds, often called missions, and forced them to endure grueling labor on Spanish-run farms. Any attempt to flee was met with brutal reprisals.
“The army would round the person up, bring him back to the mission compound, and then the person is punished,” he said, “The mission compound was run kind of like a military boot camp.”

A group of Native Americans remains opposed to the canonization. They prayed at the mission’s cemetery and to express disappointment that the pope ignored a request to listen to them. “Supposedly as a man of God that he doesn’t care what thousands of California Indians are saying, even to come and meet with us,” Esselen Nation Tribal Chairwoman Louise Miranda Ramirez said.

“Serra was not the face of evil”, says Deborah Miranda, a professor of literature at Washington and Lee University and an Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Indian. “But there were so many atrocities happening and he closed his eyes,” she said. “I don’t think he should be rewarded for that.”

Source: Think Progres

My comment:

Lets keep the unbiblical canonization process of the Roman Catholic Church for a moment.  And rather focus on the injustice done to people who were forcefully converted to Catholicism druing the failed Spanish conquest of California.

To canonize a brutal oppressor of the Spanish colonialism is yet another example of the double talk of the present Pope. He speaks against Capitalism and oppression of the poor in one TV-camera. And in the next, he praises Franciscan munk Junipero Serra.

A lot of people do not mind that the Christian faith is defamed by the Pope. They use the papacy as an example of why they do not believe in the Biblical faith in Jesus.

Let it be underline, one more time. The Pope is an antichrist. All true evangelical Christians have held this view since the Reformation.  In our days, a lot of apostate protestants tries to revoke the lessons of the Reformation, and have started to embrace the Pope as a Christian leader. Do not listen to them, but rather rebuke and resist them.

May Jesus the Messiah have mercy on all deceived souls.

Written by Ivar