Pope Francis says he will declare that Junipero Serra, one of the founders of modern California, is a Roman Catholic saint.

Serra, who established nine of California’s 21 Spanish missions, is both a revered and a controversial figure in the state’s history.

He is lauded for his saintly virtues, which included piety and a fierce determination to bring Christianity to the natives of California.

But he has also been denounced by some American Indians because Spanish rule destroyed the Indian culture in California. They say the missions under his control were agents of Spanish imperialism, and that he mistreated native people.

Serra is a major figure in the state’s complex history. “Serra is very important in the California story,” said UC Riverside Professor Steven Hackel, who is the author of “Junipero Serra: California’s Founding Father,” a biography published last year.

His admirers have long campaigned to have Serra proclaimed a saint. On Thursday, they got their wish. While traveling from Sri Lanka to Manila by air, Pope Francis made a surprise announcement: “In September, God willing, I will canonize Junipero Serra in the United States.”

The pope has scheduled a U.S. visit for the fall. He plans to visit Philadelphia and other cities, and there was speculation Thursday that he might come to California for the canonization ceremony. Serra is buried in the Mission San Carlos Borromeo in Carmel.

The pope hailed Serra as “the evangelizer of the West in the United States,” and said he had waived the requirement that candidates for sainthood had been involved in verifiable miracles.

Legendary figure

Serra has been a subject of veneration among California Catholics. Pope John Paul II beatified Serra in 1988, and he has since been known as “Blessed Junipero Serra.”

However, sainthood means that the Roman Catholic Church believes the person to be in the divine presence — in heaven — and that a person is worthy of devotion. It means that once the ceremony of canonization is performed, the humble Franciscan friar will be known as St. Junipero Serra and churches can be named in his honor.

Serra’s name is already all over California. Streets, schools, mountains and even a freeway are named for him. The story of Father Serra and the missions is taught in California schools.

Junipero Serra was born on the Spanish island of Mallorca in 1713 as Miquel Josep Serra Ferrer. He joined the Franciscan order as a young man and took the name “Junipero” in honor of St. Juniper, a companion of St. Francis of Assisi. He became a teacher and later a professor at a Franciscan college on the island.

To the New World

In 1749 he was assigned to service in Mexico and was in charge of missions north of Mexico City. In 1769, on orders of his superior and of the Viceroy of New Spain, he went to what is now California and established the Mission of San Diego de Alcala.

San Diego was the first European settlement in upper or Alta California. Serra was president of the California missions and in his administration eight more missions were founded, among them Mission San Francisco de Asis in the present city of San Francisco.

Serra was famous for his piety, his determination to convert the Indian people in California to Christianity and his administrative ability. His missions prospered, despite the long distance from the Spanish bases in Mexico.

“He was a brilliant tactician in terms of marshaling his resources,” Hackel said. But, he added, Serra was also controversial, even in his own time. He quarreled with the civil authorities and with the military.

“He also had an unstinting belief that he could convert the people he found in California to Christianity and lead them to wholly new lives,” Hackel said. “He was a missionary’s missionary.”

Divergent views

However, the Spanish attempts to turn the Californians into farmers and ranchers with European beliefs led to clashes. There were Indian rebellions, most notably at San Diego, the first mission, a turn of events that stunned Serra.

In addition, the Spaniards brought diseases that had not been seen before, and the missionaries’ policies, which required that Indian converts live in the mission complex, decimated whole tribes.

When the Spanish first settled in California, the Indian population was estimated at 300,000; when United States forces took it in 1846, the population had dropped by half.

Many Indians blamed Serra, as the foremost example of Spanish imperialism. “The Serra story is a hoax that has been perpetrated for 200 years,” said the late Rupert Costo, a scholar of American Indian history who founded the American Indian Historical Society in San Francisco.

Not all native people take this view of Serra. On hearing of the pope’s intention to canonize Serra, Andrew Galvan, who is an Ohlone and the curator of Mission Dolores in San Francisco, said the pope had made him “the happiest Indian in California.”

He said Serra was a good person who served in a difficult time. “We shouldn’t use 21st century standards to judge events in the 18th century,” he said.

But Vincent Medina, who is also an Ohlone Indian and Galvan’s cousin, strongly disagreed. Serra, he said, “was a leader of a disastrous genocidal system. I am not in favor of his canonization.

“I am a practicing Catholic and a great fan of Pope Francis, but I am disappointed in what he did.”

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf