Junipero Serra, hailed by the Catholic Church as a great evangelizer but accused by many Native Americans of forced conversions and enslaving converts, has been given thumbs up by the Vatican's saint-making office.
The approval to be declared a saint comes four months after Pope Francis announced he would canonize the controversial 18th-century missionary during his upcoming visit to the United States, reported The Associated Press.
Serra has been blamed for helping wipe out indigenous populations after establishing missions across California as part of the European colonization machine in the Americas.
The out-of-order process that Serra's sainthood case has taken indicates that Francis personally willed the canonization and that the normal vetting process by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which ended with the Vatican announcement Wednesday, was something of a formality.
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