Issue date: 20 Jan, 2014
POPULAR CHARACTERS
This issue is dedicated to Popular Characters, and commemorates the names of Fray Junípero Serra and the 300th anniversary of his birth; and Pedro Cieza de León, explorer and chronicler of the Indies.
Fray Junípero Serra, named Miquel Joseph Serra, was born in Petra, Mallorca in 1713 and died in Monterrey, California in 1784. He studied with the Franciscans and entered the order as a monk, changing his name when he took his vows. In 1749, he was sent with other Franciscans to New Spain, now Mexico, where he was a missionary in Sierra Gorda, Queretano, preaching the gospel in various parts of the country. After the Jesuits were expelled from New Spain in 1767, Fray Junípero and other monks were sent to Lower and Upper California to found a range of missions reaching up to the bay of San Francisco in the USA. Over the years, these missions became important cities, such as San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. The missions were set up peacefully and, as the population was converted to Catholicism, the monks provided them with seeds and animals, and taught them how to plough, animal husbandry, construction and cloth weaving. He was beatified in 1988 by Pope John Paul II.
The stamp depicts Fray Junípero and a map of Baja California.
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