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On Wednesday, in one of his first acts in Washington, Pope Francis stood beneath the great dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and made Junipero Serra a saint.

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With thousands in attendance, Francis tried to set aside controversy over Serra’s treatment of Native Americans to instead focus on the 18th century Franciscan friar’s role in spreading the Gospel in the Americas.

“Siempre adelante,” the pope said, quoting Serra’s motto in Spanish. “Keep moving forward.”

This weekend, as Francis was still greeting crowds on the East Coast, however, vandals in California made a statement of their own by defacing the newly christened saint’s grave.

“Saint of Genocide” they wrote on a headstone at the Carmel Mission in Carmel, Calif., where Serra is buried. They also poured green paint on a statue of Serra and splashed headstones with blood-red paint.

The incident is being investigated as a hate crime because the vandals targeted “specifically the headstones of people of European descent, and not Native American descent,” Carmel police Sgt. Luke Powell told the Los Angeles Times.