The First Mission

(Photo: The Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo of Monterey in 1934, photographed by Roger Sturtevant as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey, considered in the public domain).

The graceful Carmel Mission is certainly the better known Spanish mission on the Monterey Peninsula, but it wasn't the first. Father Junipero Serra, along with the priests and soldiers he brought with him, and the California natives they enlisted, built a mission in Monterey shortly after landing on June 3, 1770. The priests moved the mission to the Carmel River three miles away by the end of 1771. Historians say there were two reasons for the move: The riverside was more fertile for crops, and the priests were having trouble separating the Spanish soldiers from the Indian women. The original buildings in Monterey were destroyed in 1789, when misguided canons set them ablaze. The replacement church was finished in 1794 – the Royal Presidio Chapel, a sandstone and adobe structure that stands today as the San Carlos Cathedral.

Father Serra

(Image: Father Serra at age 61, several years before his death. Author unknown. Public domain).

Sainthood was proposed for Father Junipero Serra 60 years ago by the Catholic Diocese of Monterey-Fresno. The laborious process has moved slowly since. In 1985, the Vatican recognized Serra as worthy for establishing the Spanish missions in California during the 18th century. In 1986, Pope John Paul II declared the priest venerable, and was expected to beatify him in September 1987 while visiting Serra's grave at the Carmel Mission. But Indian protests erupted. Some historians and Catholics see Serra as a hero who brought Christianity to save the souls of thousands of California Indians, while other historians and Indian descendants see him as a brutal force of cultural genocide. Most Indians died young from various diseases brought by the Spanish, and some were treated as captives and slaves. A year after his Carmel visit, the pope did beatify Serra and move him one step from sainthood, but the controversy simmers on.