CALIFORNIA
Sacramento Bee
BY DAN WALTERSDWALTERS@SACBEE.COM
04/23/2015
The Catholic Church’s first Latino pope is on the verge of canonizing Junipero Serra, the 18th century Spanish missionary who brought Christianity to California and built the first of the state’s famed missions.
Figuratively, however, the state Senate’s Latino leadership, including President Pro Tem Kevin de León, is thumbing its collective nose at Pope Francis and Serra by voting to remove the missionary priest’s statue from the U.S. Capitol.
The squabble over ethnicity, sexual orientation, revisionist history and political symbolism is making global headlines and is another emotion-tinged conflict for a Legislature already in turmoil over right-to-die and mandatory vaccination bills.
Each state can have statues of two historic figures in the U.S. Capitol, and California’s are Serra, since 1931, and former President Ronald Reagan, who in 2009 replaced 19th century anti-slavery minister Thomas Starr King.
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