I, FOR ONE, LOVE JUNIPERO SERRA

Recently friends of ours got married, and after their wedding Mass, I wandered the grounds of the church and got a photo in front of Saint Junipero Serra.  Junipero was born in 1713 in Southern Spain, but he died in Carmel, California, after he founded 9 Missions.  He was a missionary Franciscan whose white-hot zeal to make Catholics out of the native people upsets many today, so much so that on Friday, June 19, the statue of Junipero that had been aloft a pillar in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park was lassoed with rope and toppled to the grassy ground below.

I think we may answer this boorish act of vandalism firstly by praying to St Juniperro, but also by showing we stand by him, and thus as pictures and videos of the statue of Juniperro's statue being thrown to the ground are circulating, perhaps we might offer a pious alternative of posting pictures of ourselves next to statues of Junipero? #IStandByJunipero is the hashtag I suggest.