Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on court proceedings against those who vandalized a statue of St. Serra:
On December 11, five persons will be arraigned in Marin County, California for destroying a statue of Saint Junípero Serra at Mission San Rafael on October 12. Serra was an 18th century priest who did more to defend the rights of American Indians than any other person. A petition defending the thugs has been sent to District Attorney Lori Frugoli.
On October 29, I wrote to D.A. Frugoli in support of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s call for justice. He said “this attack on a cherished religious symbol on our own church property is not a minor property crime, but an attack on Catholics as a people.” I seconded Cordileone’s plea that Frugoli apply the full measure of the law against those responsible for this vicious anti-Catholic crime.
One of the principal defenders of this obscene petition is a woman called Morning Star Gali, an American Indian. She justifies the violence by saying this is “an opportunity” for the Catholic Church “to rectify issues of the past and the violence that the church is responsible” for. She is the project director for Restoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples.
Gali is a left-wing extremist funded by—you guessed—George Soros. She suffers not only from a moral disability, she has a poor command of history.
Her moral disability is evident in her audacious claim that the Catholic Church is responsible for oppressing Indians. It was the Spanish colonizers who mistreated Indians, and it was the Church that did what it could to mitigate this injustice. It must also be said that the Indians were very good at killing each other, thus Americans today do not need to be lectured by their descendants about oppression.
Gali, and those like her, need to stop perpetuating the myth that American Indians are an “indigenous” people. They are not. As defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, “indigenous” means “naturally existing in a place or country rather than arriving from another place.” The ancestors of American Indians arrived from Asia. Ergo, they are no more indigenous to America than any other immigrant group.
D.A. Frugoli should treat this incident as a hate crime, and not as a political act.
Contact Frugoli: lfrugoli@marincounty.org
