United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

126 • Part I. The Creed: The Faith Professed

this way, they were helped to move from their nomadic past to a stable domestic way of life. His extensive factual reports of his missionary actions reveal a man who loved his people. In 1987, when St. John Paul II planned to beatify Fr. Serra, a protest was raised by some Native Americans, who argued that the Spanish soldiers and missionaries tried to eradicate the language, culture, and identity of their people in California. The Pope met with Native American leaders in Phoenix. He defended the legacy of the Franciscan missionaries. He admitted that there had been some excesses. He also noted that the weight of the evidence indicated that Fr. Serra had never been guilty of mistreating the Native Americans. Actually, he had defended them from harm. The Pope then went to the San Carlos mission (Monterey-Carmel) and prayed at Fr. Serra’s grave. He beatified Fr. Serra on September 25, 1988, in St. Peter’s Square. He praised Fr. Serra as “an exemplary model of the selfless evangelizer, a shining example of Christian virtue and the missionary spirit.” A statue of St. Junipero Serra is in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. A bronze statue of Serra is mounted in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. His name has been adopted by the lay organization known as the Serra Club, which does much to fos ter vocations to the priesthood and religious life in the United States and other countries. Fr. Serra died in 1784. St. Junipero Serra, now on his final step to sainthood, witnessed to the holiness of the Church. As an extraordinary missionary, Serra is an excep tional example of the Church’s apostolic calling to preach and witness the Gospel to all peoples. He thus exhibited in an extraordinary way two of the four marks that characterize the Church. • THE FOUR MARKS OF THE CHURCH

It is Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, makes his Church one, holy, catholic and apostolic, and it is he who calls her to realize each of these qualities.

—CCC, no. 811