The Mass, which was concelebrated by 1,000 priests, was held on the East Portico of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The massive congregation gathered on the University Mall, in crowds that spread from the front of the Basilica to Mullen Library and beyond.

Pope Francis began his homily with a message of joy.

Deacons, accompanied by student volunteers, process to Mass in order to distribute communion.

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” he said. “I’ll say it again: Rejoice in the Lord always.”

Rather than settling for earthly pleasures and “things that are comfortable,” the Pope told the massive congregation to avoid falling into apathy, “a habit with a fatal consequence: our hearts go numb.”

Continuing, the Pope said Christians should live out their joyful faith by proclaiming the Gospel to the entire world — going out “to the highways” — and sharing the good news without judgment or condescension.

“Jesus would not provide a short list of who is or who is not worthy of receiving his presence,” Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis also spoke highly of St. Junípero, calling him “the embodiment of a church which goes forth.” He said people should follow in his example by following the new saint’s motto in life: “Siempre Adelante,” which translates to “Keep moving forward.”

The Mass, which was celebrated in Spanish, was intended to shine a light on the diverse Catholic community in the United States and the Washington Metropolitan Area. The program included readings in English and the Native American Chochenyo language. Following the Homily, a Universal Prayer included lines read in Korean, American Sign Language, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Igbo, and Creole.

Simeone Tartaglione, conductor of the CUA Symphony Orchestra, conducts University musicians following the conclusion of the papal Mass on Sept. 23.

Music for the Mass was provided by the CUA Symphony Orchestra and five choirs, including the University Chamber Choir. The orchestra performed under the direction of Simeone Tartaglione, the orchestra’s music director, while the chamber choir was conducted by Leo Nestor, Justine Bayard Ward Professor and director of choral studies and CUA’s Institute of Sacred Music.

Several alumni and faculty members composed original works for the visit, including Nestor. Nestor’s compositions for the Mass included the introit, the communion antiphon, and an original work, “I am the Living Bread,” that was performed during the communion rite.

Following the Holy Eucharist, which was distributed by more than 200 deacons accompanied by student volunteers, Cardinal Donald Wuerl gave a short address to the Pope and those in attendance.

“Not far from here in 1634, the first Catholics arrived in what is now the United States and began the evangelization effort that we see so wonderfully realized today at this great Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the campus of The Catholic University of America,” Cardinal Wuerl said.

“As we seek today to enrich our human culture with the great love — love of God and love of neighbor, we also try to care for our common home, the good earth,” he continued. “We take seriously your call in Laudato Sí to face the challenges of our day and to do so with respect for the dignity of each person; concern for one another, especially the marginalized and the poor; and care for the good earth, God’s gift to us now and for generations to come.”

Thanking the Holy Father for visiting the University and the United States, Cardinal Wuerl continued:  “We look to you, Holy Father, for renewed inspiration so that we might truly be evangelizers.”

> Full transcript of the Pope’s homily

Mass with Francis from CUA Video on Vimeo.

Father Eric de la Pena, associate chaplain for the University, was the celebrant for the Mass, which honored Our Lady of Sorrows.

“In the spirit of Blessed Junípero Serra, who embraced another culture out of love for Christ, I think this sensitizes us to the reality that we have neighbors who may not speak our language,” he said. “I think it’s more than just getting familiar with the prayers. The experience of meeting another culture widens your world and widens your vision of life. Our prayers become richer by involving other cultures.”

Father Eric de la Pena, associate chaplain, celebrates a Mass in Spanish Sept. 15.

Those who attended the Mass also had the opportunity to venerate a first-class relic of Junípero Serra: a piece of his bone. Father de la Pena obtained the relic for his personal collection after writing to the Shrine of Blessed Junípero Serra in Carmel, Calif.

“When you look at a picture of the saint, you almost feel like they are three feet above the ground, but the relics give us a sense that they were flesh and bone just like us and give us a sense of hope,” Father de la Pena said. “As a sacramental of the Church, they remind us of everything good that God has promised to us, that even in our frailty as human beings we can aspire to something good as these holy men and women.”

Senior Maria Thurber, a theology and Spanish major from St. Petersburg Fla., is a member of the Spanish Club, which worked with Campus Ministry to organize the Mass. As a heritage Spanish speaker — her mother is from Ecuador — she said she’s excited that the Mass honoring Junípero Serra will be in Spanish.

“I feel very proud that the first Latin American pope is going to come and do a Mass in Spanish,” she said. “For students, there will be nothing better than going to the Mass, knowing what they’re saying so they feel more a part of it. The language barrier won’t exist, or at least it won’t be so harsh.”

This summer, Thurber was in Ecuador during Pope Francis’s visit to Latin America. During her time there, she attended a papal Mass and held a sign that said, “Pope Francis, I’ll C-U Sept. 23 at Catholic University.”

“To see him there, it just made us Latin Americans all so proud,” she said. “The Catholic faith is so important to us, so to have our pope speak Spanish is just unbelievable.”

Students will have another opportunity to attend a Spanish language Mass on Sept. 22. That Mass, which will honor Our Lady of Mercy, will begin at 5:10 p.m. in Caldwell Chapel. Those present will once again have the opportunity to venerate the relic of Blessed Junípero Serra.

Father Eric de la Pena

We certainly live at an interesting time in the life of the Church in this country. The emerging religious landscape poses a challenge to those who still look to the Church for the proclamation of the faith. I also think that Pope Francis’s upcoming visit to the United States in a couple of weeks will force the American Church to ask, “Why still believe?”

Pope Francis’ vision of reviving the Church can help us a lot in making sense of how to practice the faith today. In Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope cautioned us to be careful in how we communicate the Gospel to others. He said that there is an “imbalance” when we speak “more about law than about grace, more about the church than about Christ, more about the pope than about God’s word.” In short, the Gospel we proclaim must embody the reality of God’s love which is revealed to us in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. It is in the experience of Divine goodness and love,  that is grace, that people are drawn back to the practice of faith, more than by any Church law or dogma. It is this “hook” which Christ gave to Peter and to us that will bring others back to the practice of faith and the fold of the Church.

I think it is providential that when the Pope comes to CUA, he will also canonize one of the first men to evangelize the country. Blessed Junipero Serra, a Franciscan missionary from Spain, was known for his tireless preaching of the Gospel to the Native Americans. His work in California successfully established the first nine Spanish missions from San Diego to Sonoma which covered a vast area of 700 miles. Moreover, Blessed Junipero was credited for protecting the natives from the abuses of the Spanish Conquistadors. He was a true father to them, not only in preaching the faith, but also in caring for their wellbeing and in generously sharing his life with them.

We truly owe it to ourselves to make our Faith alive and relevant in the public sphere like the early Church. We do this by making known to others not only the content of our Creed but more importantly why we believe it. Pope Francis and Blessed Junipero are great examples for us as we engage in the New Evangelization.

At The Catholic University of America, we seek to learn from their example. As we prepare for the canonization of Blessed Junipero Serra, we are planning special opportunities for the community to venerate a first-class relic of Serra as a way to bring greater appreciation to our future saint. There will be veneration of the relic at Caldwell Chapel on September 15 and 22 after the 5:10 pm mass.

On our campus, we are also taking up Pope Francis’s message to return to the central message of the Gospel. The Office of Campus Ministry has a wonderful program of faith-sharing groups called RENEW. The groups foster evangelization among our students through weekly reflection on the Gospel—like the early Christians who came together in small groups in what were known as house churches. It is a great way for our students to become more committed to the faith by regularly pondering God’s Word together. It creates deep bonds of friendship and faith in the process.

May all our efforts to share the Catholic faith contribute to the new evangelization that we have been called to do.

— Father Eric de la Pena, O.F.M. Conv., is an associate chaplain for faith development at The Catholic University of America.

Chad Pecknold

One day former classmate and fellow Franciscan Friar Francisco Palou approached Junípero with the same burning desire, and a plan to make a great missionary to “New Spain” (what is now Mexico). When his confrere asked the learned professor, unaware of his own secret longing, to accompany him on the journey, Fray Junípero wept tears of joy. Together they had the courage to go to the peripheries of a new world to conform themselves more fully to God’s will, to preach the Gospel, and in doing so bring every soul to Christ.

When in Mexico, Junípero gained a reputation for preaching even when no one was around. At Mission San Antonio, the small brown-habited friar was once spotted ringing a great bell that hung from a tall tree, shouting: “Come you pagans; come, come to the Holy Church; come, come to receive the Faith of Jesus Christ.”

When one of his confreres found him, he kindly pointed out that there wasn’t a pagan in sight. Quizzically he asked, “We haven’t even built the church yet? Isn’t the bell ringing a bit much? A bit pointless?” Fray Junípero answered joyfully, “[A]llow my overflowing heart to express itself!” And added, “I wish this bell could be heard throughout the world … or at least by every pagan who inhabits this sierra.” For Junípero, it was the bell of freedom, the bell that called the world to know and love the source of all happiness and joy in Jesus Christ.

Junípero Serra never stopped ringing that bell.

For nine years with the Pame Indians he rang that bell by learning their language — with which he would preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them — and by teaching the natives agricultural skills — with which they could grow the wheat to make the bread that he would consecrate in the Holy Eucharist.

In 1767 he was asked to ring that bell in Baja California, overseeing 13 missions there that had been established by Jesuits but then abandoned when they were recalled to Spain. Very soon after arriving in Baja California, however, a new Spanish plan was conceived for Alta California. This would entail a two-pronged endeavor, combining colonization and conversion. The new plan was to colonize the new territory and spread the Christian faith to its pagan inhabitants. Junípero Serra was asked to help with the latter. He was sent to the northernmost mission, San Diego, in 1769.

Dotted along the coast of California today, like beads of the rosary he prayed, remain the 21 missions he founded successively from 1770 to 1782. Even before the New England colonists declared their independence from another imperial power, Californians were turning towards Christ — and they were doing so because a small-statured theology professor rang that other liberty bell, which shouts in the public square, “Come to the Holy Church! Come to receive the Faith of Jesus Christ!” For this freedom is not simply the freedom from the tyranny of evil, but freedom for the highest Good: to know and love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

Blessed Serra wasn’t perfect. He was well aware of his own limitations, imperfections, and failings. In truth, and in humility, Serra wrote,  “There is no reason why my name should be mentioned, except for the blunders I may have committed in doing the work.”

But the Church does not remember his name because of his blunders. We remember his name because his heart was overflowing with a zeal for Christ that did not count the cost and a love of his neighbor’s soul that looked not upon borders. On Sept. 23, 2015, Pope Francis, as supreme pontiff, will canonize him as Saint Junípero Serra, with a holy confidence that his life itself is a kind of bell, which rings for our highest freedom, the freedom of eternal life.

—    Chad Pecknold is an associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America School of Theology and Religious Studies.

Junípero Serra is depicted in a mosaic above the north arch of the East Portico of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception just a few feet from where Pope Francis will be seated at the canonization Mass for Serra.

Whether by coincidence or providence, the Catholic Church’s official announcement on June 30 of the schedule for the Mass at which Blessed Junípero Serra will be canonized preceded by one day the July 1 feast day already established for Serra. At daily Masses celebrated by Catholics throughout the United States on this date, the Collect, which is part of the introductory rite of the Mass, includes the following reference to Serra:

O, God, who by your ineffable mercy, have been pleased through the labors of your priest Blessed Junípero Serra to count many American peoples within your Church, grant by his intercession that we may so join our hearts to you in love, as to carry always and everywhere before all people the image of your Only Begotten Son.

The Mass celebrated by Pope Francis on Sept. 23 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception will mark the first time a saint has been canonized on American soil. For more information about the life and legacy of Blessed Junípero Serra and the process of canonization, see the official website promoting his cause for sainthood.

The discussion of Serra, Kino, and Marquette focused on their contributions to U.S. history and to the growth of the Church in the United States.

Speakers included:

Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Arizona, a proponent of the cause of sainthood for Eusebio Kino;

Dr. Steven Hackel, professor of history at the University of California-Riverside, and author of “Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father;”

Dr. Tracy Neal Leavelle, associate professor of history and associate dean for humanities and fine arts at Creighton University, and author of “The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America;”

Rev. Gerald Fogarty, S.J., professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Virginia;

Rev. Joe Nangle, O.F.M., associate pastor of Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish in Arlington, who served as a missionary in Latin America for 15 years.

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