Habana Vieja, Old Havana

The statue of Fray Junípero Serra, (1713 – 1784), a priest and friar of the Franciscan Order next to the basilica. He founded a mission in Baja California and the first nine of 21 Spanish missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco, in what was then Alta California in the Province of Las Californias, New Spain. Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1988 and Pope Francis canonised him in 2015. He is with a boy of the Juaneño or Acjachemen indigenous people of California, enslaved by the Spanish in 1776.