Among the notable band of missionaries
was Father Francisco Palou, life-long friend and co-laborer of Father
Junipero Serra.
But why did these heroes choose Mexico and California as the vineyards
of their labors? Why did they not go to Africa or other heathen shores?
Here is the answer: Spain and all Europe were filled with stories of the
New World since the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, and
several other Spanish discoveries in later years, among which must be
remembered that in 1521, Hernando Cortes, one of the great Spanish
explorers of the sixteenth century, explored the hitherto unknown land
of Mexico, and as Spain always accompanied her conquests and
explorations with her missionaries to evangelize the heathens, at the
time that Father Junipero Serra set sail for the New World, which was in
1759, there were in Mexico an archbishopric and several missions
conducted by Spanish priests, among them a well established Franciscan
College in San Fernando, a settlement in the northern part of Mexico,
which the Spanish explorers and missionaries so decided to name after
Saint Ferdinand, a King of Spain, who lived in the thirteenth century.
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