Rome — The canonization of Blessed Junipero Serra honors a famous missionary who was motivated by love of God, but it also is a call to recognize how the process of evangelization must respect peoples and their cultures, said the head of the Franciscan order. Father Michael Perry, minister general of the Order of Friars Minor, will be present in Washington, D.C., Sept. 23 when Pope Francis canonizes Blessed Serra, the 18th-century Franciscan missionary who founded the string of famous California missions. The pope’s decision to canonize Blessed Serra has provoked some controversy, mainly because of the impact of the missions on native peoples and cultures and because of claims that Serra used corporal punishment on the Indians who lived at the missions. In an interview with Catholic News Service July 31, Perry said, “When I first got word about the canonization, I had to stop and sit back for a moment.” Serra’s missionary activity, he said, may have had “unintended consequences” and may have used methods contrary to the “sensibilities of people today,” Perry said. “I think we need to make sure this canonization is not simply a chance to validate maybe some bad things that happened, but to challenge us always to enter into a process of reform, of conversion and of authentic dialogue with cultures, with peoples everywhere.” The canonization will be a blessing, he said, if Catholics “take a step back, take a deep breath and recognize that in history, at times, mistakes have been made. We’re human beings.” Perry said he does not know for certain how Pope Francis learned of Serra, who was beatified by St. John Paul II in 1988. However, he said, the California missionary is a key part of California history as well as of the mission history of the Americas. Flying back to the Vatican from the Philippines in January, Pope Francis “caught us off guard — in a good way” — with his announcement he would canonize Blessed Serra in September during his visit to the United States, Perry said. The order had to scramble, he said, to collect and prepare the necessary paperwork. The Catholic Church is recognizing Blessed Serra as a saint and holy man, the Franciscan superior said. “This man was in love with God” and “was convinced he had a missionary vocation to go and share what he himself had received — the mercy of God, the forgiveness he received in his own life and the joy of the Gospel that he experienced, the joy of being a Franciscan.” Blessed Serra, Perry said, “was a man of his time” and understood mission the way almost everyone in the church understood it in the 18th century and, in fact, basically until the Second Vatican Council. “The missionary ideal of church was that salvation outside the church did not exist,” Perry said, the missionaries “felt this compulsion: They needed to share the good news, they needed to invite people to embrace the Gospel and become members of the visible church because this was the theology of the church at the time.” In addition, he said, being a missionary in the 18th century often meant working under a colonial government, like the Spanish government in California. The Franciscan leader said Blessed Serra’s letters make it clear that while he cooperated with the Spanish colonial authorities, he was “very concerned about the plight of the people he evangelized,” especially at the hands of the colonial forces.