Mission San Juan Capistrano

Image: Wikimedia Commons

This mission carries the name of the saint whose feast falls today: John of Capistrano, the fifteenth-century Italian lawyer and governor who, after prison and a shattered career, became a Franciscan, preached across Europe, and at nearly seventy rode with the army that lifted the siege of Belgrade in 1456, dying a few months later. Junípero Serra founded the California mission under his patronage on November 1, 1776, the seventh in the chain. Its little adobe chapel of 1782 still stands, the oldest building in California still in use and the only surviving church where Serra is documented to have said Mass; inside, a Baroque retablo carved in Barcelona three centuries ago glows behind the altar. Beside it rise the roofless arches of the Great Stone Church, finished in 1806 and toppled by the earthquake of December 8, 1812, which killed dozens at morning Mass; its four bells hang in a low wall nearby, and the ruins have been called the most beautiful in the West. Each spring the swallows come back to nest in them, a homecoming this town has celebrated for generations.