Armed with a first-class relic of St. Junípero Serra, more than 300 faithful began their pilgrimage from Mission Santa Barbara to the Mission Basilica of San Buenaventura, in Ventura, California, Aug. 10-11. 

Participants in the St. Junípero Serra Walking Pilgrimage traversed the stretch of 35 miles following Saturday-morning Mass, accompanied by the Santa Barbara Mission bells. Galician bagpipes and drums sounded, evoking music that accompanies pilgrims on the famed Camino de Santiago, as banners of St. Junípero and other Catholic imagery flowed in the ocean breeze.

The pilgrims stopped outside the Santa Barbara Poor Clares’ convent and sang a Marian hymn for the cloistered nuns. Winding their way through Santa Barbara to Stearns Wharf, the pilgrims continued along the Pacific coast. Lunch was provided by the Knights of Columbus. The pilgrims spent the night on the grounds of St. Joseph Church in Carpinteria, where adoration and confession were offered.

“It was a quiet, prayerful evening — like St. Joseph himself,” Greg Wood, a Catholic father of six and parishioner at the Mission Basilica of San Buenaventura, observed of the fourth-annual pilgrimage.

With tiny brass bells clanging on the pilgrims’ backpacks, the pilgrimage continued along the Pacific coast that Sunday. 

Mission San Buenaventura bells clanged when the pilgrims appeared in view later that day. Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez greeted the pilgrims with a monstrance of the Eucharistic Lord. The archbishop then led the pilgrims into the mission’s basilica. 

“It was like stepping into a foretaste of heaven,” Wood said of the moment.

 

Such spiritual consolation was a far cry from what transpired four years earlier. 

It was July 23, 2020. An iconic statue of St. Junípero Serra was being dismantled and ushered away to an undisclosed location. That June, an enraged crowd tore down a St. Junípero statue in San Francisco’s Golden Gate park. Days later, another Serra statue was toppled on L.A.’s historic Olvera Street. Earlier that July, an arsonist set ablaze Mission San Gabriel. 

It was the summer of racial reckoning — and Christian iconoclasm.

Wood watched in the dead of night as the crane lifted the statue of the Franciscan founder of the California Missions system from its pedestal at historic Ventura City Hall. City officials had to hire the crane from a company out of Los Angeles, 60 miles to the southeast. Nobody local wanted to be involved — so the deed had to be done at 3 a.m.

The pandemic-timed assault on Serra reminded Wood of a particular Gospel verse: “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me” (Matthew 5:11). 

Wood was part of the defense of the statue earlier that month, as he and other Catholics and concerned Ventura residents stood between the figure of St. Serra and an oncoming group of hostile vigilantes, one demonstrator waving a metal fence post. Violence and vandalism were avoided, and the statue remained intact — until the crane came.

When the welcoming summer light broke over the deserted streets of Ventura hours later, the representation of the “Apostle of California” that had stood at that location in various iterations since 1936 had vanished, leaving behind an empty pedestal. 

Out of this void, Wood could not help but think the character and memory of Junípero Serra were being dragged through mud, the pious padre from Mallorca unfairly blamed for the imperfect colonization of California from Spanish, Mexican and American overseers and subsequent treatment of its Indigenous peoples. 

Wood wanted to do something. He wanted to help make spiritual reparation for the tarnishing of Serra’s legacy. Wood recalled the mission trail blazed by Father Serra and his Franciscans. Father Serra was famous for his penchant for walking. It was not uncommon for him to traverse his headquarters at Mission San Carlos in present-day Carmel, California to Mexico City and back. 

“I love to bring my children to the missions to see the seeds of faith in California,” Wood told the Register. 

Discerning the prompting of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of San Buenaventura Mission pastor Father Tom Elewaut, Wood launched the Serra Walking Pilgrimage in 2021. 

“People have real hunger for authenticity and truth,” Wood said. “Our job as Catholics is to be public witnesses.” 

The fourth-annual walking pilgrimage was a spiritual success. Wood and fellow Catholics ensured double attendance of the original walk.

And reparation has been accomplished, too: The statue that was so ignobly removed from public view four years earlier was reinstalled at the mission — designated by Pope Francis as a minor basilica and recently renovated — with the archbishop on hand to rededicate the statue on holy ground on Aug. 11. 

“[The pilgrims] were dog tired,” Father Elewaut recalled. “But they were spiritually replenished, the pilgrimage a sign of an endurance of faith.”

To date, there remains no actual pilgrim trail similar to others like Spain’s Camino. But Wood is connected with groups seeking to make such a pilgrimage more accessible. One is the California Mission Walkers, which published its second edition of California Mission Walk: The Hiker’s Guide to California’s 21 Spanish Missions Along El Camino Real in 2022.

Another is California Camino, which takes a distinctly Catholic approach to walking the mission trail.

“The California Mission Trail is just waiting for the resources to become a significant evangelization tool,” Wood said.

“We are all on a journey toward the Kingdom,” emphasized Father Elewaut, who has been the mission’s pastor since 2011. “The kingdom is here on Earth, but we are all on the way [to our eternal home], the way being Jesus Christ. The pilgrims remind us we are walking in the light of Christ, day by day, year by year.”