Mission San Rafael Arcángel

The Story

San Rafael Arcángel was founded on December 14, 1817, as an asistencia, a branch hospital for Mission Dolores across the bay. San Francisco's cold and fog were killing people in large numbers, and the friars looked for a sheltered, sunny spot in Marin. They named it for St. Raphael the Archangel, whose name means God heals. Father Vicente Francisco de Sarría led the founding, assisted by Frs. Narciso Durán, Ramón Abella, and Luis Gil y Taboada, who had some medical training.

The experiment worked well enough that in 1822 San Rafael was raised to a full mission. Coast Miwok people made up most of the community. The mission was secularized in 1834, and its buildings were sold, torn down, and quarried for materials; by 1870 nothing of the original was left, and a parish church went up on the site.

In 1949, using a sketch made by a traveler in the 1820s, a replica of the mission chapel was built next to the modern St. Raphael church. It is small and plain, with a star window over the door and three bells hung outside. Visitors see the replica chapel, a small gift shop and museum, and the parish grounds in downtown San Rafael.

Church Recognition

Mission San Rafael Arcángel was founded on December 14, 1817 by Fr. Vicente Francisco de Sarría. It is the twentieth of the twenty-one missions of Alta California, and today it is replica chapel beside st. raphael parish church.

The mission was built by Native Californians, and the Church has publicly acknowledged the coercion and harm that mission life involved. That history is told in full on the California Mission Trail page, and it belongs to this place as much as its founding date does.

Go Deeper

The only mission founded as a hospital, built to help people recover from the damp of San Francisco.

This mission is one of the twenty-one on the California Mission Trail, the twentieth to be founded. The trail page carries the history of the chain as a whole, including the Church's own reckoning with it.