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On the morning of July 16, 1769, on a windswept hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Father Junipero Serra celebrated High Mass before a hewn wooden cross. The Mass signaled the sunset of Spain’s mission colonization of the New World but the dawn of Father Serra’s greatest work.

By the 1760s Spain’s empire had been drained by far-flung battles and internal decay. When the Russians began moving from Alaska down the western coast of North America, the Spanish became alarmed. In 1768, a plan to permanently settle California was formulated. This movement, spearheaded by Captain Gaspar de Portolá, would move north from Baja California to reach Monterey’s bay, where a garrison would be established. Each wave of settlement, by land or sea, would pass through San Diego, with coastal mission settlements planned between the two points.

Taking seriously the name of this “Sacred Expedition” was Serra, a 55 year-old Franciscan friar who, despite a badly infected leg, insisted on making the trip: “I have placed all my confidence in God, of whose goodness I hope that he will grant me to reach not only San Diego but also Monterey.” His prayers were answered.

Miguel José Serra was born November 24, 1713, on the island of Majorca. Schooled at a Franciscan friary, he requested admission to the Franciscan order at age 16. Serra chose the religious name “Junipero,” recalling the simplicity and good humor of St. Francis’s early companion.

His superb teaching gifts were soon recognized and sharpened through doctoral study. But his promising career did not satisfy the young professor. Late in 1748, he requested that he and Fray Francisco Palou (his future biographer) become apostolic missionaries to the New World.

While waiting at port in Spain before the Atlantic crossing, Serra wrote a letter that spoke of the “great joy” in his heart and expressed a life theme: “Surely [my parents] would always encourage me to go forward and never to turn back.… The office of an apostolic preacher, especially its actual exercise, is the greatest calling to which they would wish me to be chosen.”

In late 1749, Serra embarked for New Spain and eventually began working in the Sierra Gorda Mountains, north of Mexico City. For eight years, the slight (5-feet, 2-inch) and impatient Serra translated Christian doctrine and prayers into the language of the Pames Indians. Serra also worked alongside the Indians to build a large stone church in Jalpan that is still used for worship today. His intensity and hard work combined with an uninhibited joy and a delight in God’s creation, and these qualities impressed his followers.

He was transferred to the College of San Fernando in 1758, where he earned a reputation as an able administrator and fervent preacher. Often he would dramatize his sermons by scourging himself with chains or pounding his chest with heavy stones. And he refused to have his infected leg treated—in the tradition of the mystics, he felt pain was a delight.

In early 1767, King Charles III suddenly expelled the Jesuits from Spain and its colonies. The orphaned Jesuit missions on the parched Baja California peninsula were entrusted to a handful of Franciscans, with Fray Serra chosen presidente of the mission. Within weeks, his missionary band began serving the Indian population of the scattered Baja missions, which were connected only by primitive roads. The following year, Serra committed himself to propagate the faith among the unreached peoples (“gentiles”) in Alta (upper) California.

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