Asking St. Junipero Serra’s intercession for California

Three young adults and their dog complete Lenten Mission pilgrimage from San Diego to Sonoma

‘I really wanted to do something for several years to pray for California. To ask God to bring about a radical reconversion to him.’

            -Hope Waterman, California Mission pilgrim

By Valerie Schmalz

A trio of twenty-something young adults and their dog Laika walked more than 800 miles in the footsteps of St. Junipero Serra on a Lenten pilgrimage to pray for California that spanned the 46 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter Vigil.

Hope Waterman, 27, Matthew Geier, 27 and John Paul Hanson, 24, began walking after the 7 a.m. Ash Wednesday Mass at the first mission, Mission San Diego de Alcalá, and concluded in time for Easter Vigil in Sonoma, where the 21st and farthest north California mission was founded by the Franciscan friars.

“I wanted to do something for several years to pray for California,” said Waterman, who was inspired to make the pilgrimage to ask the intercession of St. Junipero Serra who founded California’s mission system. The idea came to Waterman as she was praying with 40 Days for Life in October 2020 in Lander, Wyoming, as the widespread desecration and vilification of St. Junipero Serra’s statues and reputation in California was making headlines in the second half of 2020. Statues in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Rafael were among a number of statues vandalized and St. Junipero Serra’s reputation attacked, with the state of California officially removing his statue from the state capitol last year.

 “The thing I could do to bring about the radical reconversion of California was to pray to the man who brought the faith to California in the first place and to walk the missions of California as a prayer and penance for the salvation of California,” said Waterman, an emergency medical technician in Wyoming who grew up in California and in Texas. “I decided to do it in Lent and start off on Ash Wednesday.”

https://sfarchdiocese.org/asking-st-junipero-serras-intercession-for-california/

April 20, 2022