RAPE me: Pope to make missionary a "saint"

Seth Auberon, Xochitl, Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Steven W. Hackel; Alex Cohen and A Martinez, Take Two (SCPR.org, KPCC FM, Jan. 16, 2015); CBC News

Let's rule the world from this balcony on this square. Oh, and make a saint in California. Pope Francis and white labcoat clad priests hold a Nuremberg-style Hitler rally in St. Peter's Square, Holy See, independent in the center of Rome (Osservatore Romano/Reuters).

 
Catholic clergy sex crimes lead Twin Cities archdiocese to file for bankruptcy

Elizabeth Mohr, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Jan. 16, 2015

Uncuff me! Those kids were asking for it!

ST. PAUL, Minnesota - The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court Friday morning.

The move wasn't unexpected. Archdiocese officials had said in recent months that they were considering bankruptcy, after news of a $9.1 million operating deficit for fiscal year 2014 and expectations of more lawsuits by people who say they are victims of clergy sexual abuse, in addition to the more than two dozen that have already been filed lawsuits.
 

God sends storm to ruin Pope's Asia trip (AP).

Bankruptcy protection will put any current lawsuits against the archdiocese on hold, including three sex abuse trials that were slated to begin at the end of the month. However, new claims can be filed while the bankruptcy case is active.

In November, the archdiocese said its operating deficit can be partly attributed to $4.1 million spent to address allegations of clergy sexual abuse since May 2013, when a three-year window opened for abuse victims to file claims that were otherwise barred under the statute of limitations. More 

When we molest, we need to not get caught.

• Archdiocese bankrupt, sex abuse suits on hold... Archbishop John Nienstedt discussed the Archdiocese's bankruptcy filing during a news conference at Monsignor Hayden Center in St. Paul today. [We're not trying to evade paying out claims for molesting kids. We just want to be more fair in the distribution of money to innocent victims we raped and to their lawyers.]

Controversial California missions founder Junipero Serra to be made a Catholic "saint"

Mission San Antonio de Padua in Monterey County, California has a statue of Father Junipero Serra outside, a Catholic European imperialist who used religion to conquer local Native Americans and forcibly convert them to Christianity (mlhradio/flickr.com).

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Dunbar-Ortiz (beacon.org)

The Catholic Church may have a new Saint to pray to. Pope Francis announced Thursday that he will canonize Father Junipero Serra, the founder of California's missions.

The Pope said the canonization -- the formal elevation of a person to sainthood -- will take place in September when he visits the United States. Junipero Serra is a controversial figure, though, for his role in evangelizing the West -- a process that some say began the decimation of the Native American population. For more, Stephen Hackel joined Take Two. He's a Professor of History at UC Riverside and the author of Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (see below). More + AUDIO

COMMENTARY
Fr. Serra beat and coerced the Native Americans the way he would his own children -- which likely included sexual molestation and emotional and physical abuse, like the gruesome documented torture (see below) of Catholic and other Christian missionary who came alongside European military forces that came to invade, occupy, ethnically cleanse, and eventually steal everything in sight claiming "the land was empty" as a legal doctrine. Fr. and future "saint" Serra's goal was to force Native Americans convert to Christianity in general and missionary Roman Catholicism in the vein of Emperor Constantine:

Junipero Serra: California's Founding "Father"

Steven W. Hackel (Hill and Wang/us.macmillan.com)

This is a portrait of the [invading Catholic] priest and colonialist who is one of the most important figures in California’s history.
 

In the 1770s, just as Britain’s American subjects were [according to our founding myth] freeing themselves from the burdens of colonial rule, Spaniards moved up the California coast to build frontier outposts of empire and church.

At the head of this effort was Junípero Serra, an ambitious Franciscan who hoped to convert California Indians to Catholicism and turn them into European-style farmers.

For his efforts [in the service of the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire and its incarnation as Roman Catholicism], he has been beatified by the Catholic Church and widely celebrated as the man who laid the foundation for modern California [for occupation and takeover by the European invaders].

 

But his legacy is divisive. The missions Serra founded would devastate California’s Native American population, and much more than his counterparts in colonial America, he remains a contentious and contested figure to this day.
 

The Holy Roman Catholic Church's priesthood demands tribute, such as the sodomy of its subjects, preferably boys but girls and Natives will also do in a pinch, and we will glorify our mysteries and traditions in "stained" glass for all to see. Face the truth and the lawsuits.

 
Steven W. Hackel’s groundbreaking biography, Junípero Serra: California's Founding Father, is the first to remove Serra from the realm of polemic and place him within the currents of history.
 

Born into a poor family on the Spanish island of Mallorca, Serra joined the Franciscan [monastic] order and rose to prominence as a priest and professor through his feats of devotion and powers of intellect.

But he could imagine no greater service to God than converting Indians, and in 1749 he set off for the New World. In Mexico, Serra first worked as a missionary to Indians and as an uncompromising agent of the INQUISITION.

He then became an itinerant preacher, gaining a reputation as a mesmerizing orator who could inspire, enthrall, and terrify his audiences at will. With a potent blend of Franciscan piety and worldly cunning, he outmaneuvered Spanish royal officials, rival religious orders, and avaricious settlers to establish himself as a peerless frontier administrator.

In the culminating years of his life, he extended Spanish dominion north, founding and promoting missions in present-day San Diego, Los Angeles, Monterey, and San Francisco.... More

Church's violent SEXUAL abuse of children in North America
CBC News (May 16, 2008/Jan 07, 2014, CBC.ca)

An estimated 150,000 aboriginal, Inuit, and Métis children were forced from their native communities and tortured in residential schools. (Library and Archives Canada/PA-042133).

 

The abuse of Native Americans and First Nations people in the USA and Canada was not limited to Catholic missionaries; other invading Christians also raped, tortured, and emotionally abused children, such as the Anglicans and United and Presbyterian churches. (Granted the priests and nuns did not limit their abuses to Natives but also molested European children as they were able).

  
What went wrong?

Help. It's still happening along the west coast.

Residential schools were established with the assumption that aboriginal culture [Native Americans living in tune with nature for thousands or tens of thousands of years] was unable to adapt to a rapidly modernizing [invaded, enslaving, Europeanized] society.

It was believed [by no one in particularly and everyone in general] that native children could be successful if they assimilated into mainstream [French colonized] Canadian society by adopting Christianity and speaking English or French.

Students were "discouraged" from speaking their native languages or practicing their traditions. If they were caught [behaving like First Nations people], they would [be dealt] severe punishment [including but not limited to RAPE by frontier priests and nuns, beatings, kidnapping, forced relocation, isolation, torture, deprivation of culture, and on occasion a brutal death].
 

Papa, the priests won't rape us, will they?

Throughout the years, students [were forced to subsist] in substandard conditions [apart from their families and communities] and endured physical and emotional abuse. There have also been convictions of sexual abuse.

Students at residential schools rarely had opportunities to see examples of normal family life. Most were in school 10 months a year, away from their parents; some stayed all year round. All correspondence from the children was written in English, which many parents could not read. Brothers and sisters at the same school rarely saw each other, as all activities were segregated by gender.
 

"No one remembers Armenia" (AH)

According to documents obtained by the CBC, some schools carried out nutritional experiments on malnourished students in the 1940s and '50s with the federal government's knowledge.
 
When students returned to the reserve, they often found they didn't belong. They didn't have the skills to help their parents, and became ashamed of their native heritage.

The skills taught at the schools were generally substandard; many found it hard to function in an urban setting. The aims of assimilation meant devastation for those who were subjected to years of abuse. More

Life and [Horrible] Legacy of Padre Serra

Fr. Ed Benioff, LA Archdiocese at Cathedral

(AirTalk, SCPR.org, Aug. 30, 2002/WQ) Part of the dedication of Los Angeles' new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (website/facebook) includes a relic of Father Serra, destined for the altarstone.

Inspired by this event, guest host Patt Morrison talks about the life, legacy, and canonization process of Father Junipero Serra, who came to Alta California [upper part of the state above Mexico, which is called Baja California as the whole state was once Mexico until the U.S. military annexed it as their own] in 1769 to establish the [imperial] mission system.

Joining Morrison are Richard Boudreaux, Mexico City Bureau Chief for The LA Times, Richard Carrico, adjunct professor at San Diego State University's Dept. of American Indian Studies and Father Joe Scerbo, a Franciscan friar of the Atonement on the pastoral staff at Mission San Juan Capistrano. More