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On Saturday evening, the statue of St. Junipero Serra was defaced and torn down from its place in Capitol Park.  The group’s actions may have been meant to draw attention to the sorrowful, angry memories over California’s past, but this act of vandalism does little to build the future.

Saturday night, July 4, protesters in Sacramento’s Capitol Park tore down a longstanding statue of St. Junípero Serra, our nation’s first Hispanic saint, one of the founders of the modern state of California, and a tireless advocate for the rights of native Americans.

We respect the pain felt by our native brothers and sisters and their anger at the historical abuses committed against their ancestors, both during the Mission Period and especially afterward. But we need to again remind our fellow Californians, St. Junípero Serra had nothing to do with these abuses. The true historical record is clear on this point. St. Junípero loved and bravely defended the native peoples, even writing a bill of rights to protect them from the ambitions of the Spanish colonizers.