The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is severely upset by a New York Times piece about Junípero Serra, canonized in 2015 by Pope Francis.
NEW YORK TIMES LIES ABOUT ST. SERRA AGAIN
[ … ]
A week later the New York Times maligned St. Serra in a front-page story by Laura M. Holson, “Sainthood of Serra Reopens Wounds in Colonialism in California.” She said that “Historians agree that he [Serra] forced Native Americans to abandon their tribal culture and convert to Christianity, and that he had them whipped and imprisoned and sometimes worked or tortured to death.”
This was a bald-face lie.
Et cetera, et cetera.
So I did what any idle Web surfer would do: I went to Wikipedia and found this:
Serra wrote a letter in August 1778 to Fernando Rivera y Moncada explicitly instructing the colonial commander to whip and shackle Indigenous men who escaped from Mission San Carlos.
I am sending them to you so that a period of exile and two or three whippings … If Your Lordship does not have shackles, with your permission they may be sent from here.
Deborah A. Miranda, a professor of American literature at Washington and Lee University and an enrolled member of the Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation, stated that “Serra did not just bring us Christianity. He imposed it, giving us no choice in the matter. He did incalculable damage to a whole culture”.
Donohue’s Internet service doesn’t make Wikipedia available? Or is it just good for fundraising to cultivate a sense of grievance?
There certainly doesn’t appear to be any doubt that historians agree that Serra favored flogging unbelievers.