An all-too-fallible Pope

It is almost inconceivable to me that, in this day and age, the Catholic Church and the Papacy still indulge in the beatification and canonization of saints. There is just something so anachronistic, so positively medieval, about it that it is difficult to reconcile with modern 21st Century life.
It's also difficult to reconcile it with the apparently modern and thoughtful current Pope, Francis. However, while he criss-crosses the world doling out more-or-less sensible papal advice about global warming and the iniquities of capitalism, it must be remembered that Pope Francis is still mired in the benighted and fantastic dogma of the "One True Church", and he maintains the traditional repressive and antediluvian Catholic views on abortion, euthanasia, contraception, homosexuality, the ordination of women, priestly celibacy, etc.
The declaration of saints has become something of a cottage industry in the Catholic church in recent decades. Francis' ante-predecessor, John Paul II, in particular was a canonization junkie (and had the favour returned to him in 2013 by the last Pope, Benedict XVI, despite much criticism of John Paul's cover-ups of sexual abuse within the Church). The sainthood process requires one miracle for beatification, and a second for full canonization as a saint, although there do appear to be ways of "fast-tracking" sainthood and by-passing some of these rules. The miracles are typically in the form of healings from prayers to the candidate saint some years after their death, healings which the Vatican mandates must be "complete", "instantaneous", "durable", and medically and scientifically inexplicable.
It's all couched in such reasonable and quasi-legalistic terms that it almost seems to make sense until you stop and think about what it is that is actually being claimed. Pope John Paul's II's first miracle, for example, was supposed to be the healing of a French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, from a particularly aggressive form of Parkinson’s disease in 2005, although media reports in 2010 suggest that the sister has since fallen ill again, and at least one physician has questioned the initial diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, suggesting that it may have been some other nervous disorder which is susceptible to spontaneous remission. But the Vatican approved it anyway, and Pope Francis performed the beatification ceremony, and he is, after all, infallible, isn't he?
However cynical you may be about the process, though, the current Pope's canonization of the 18th Century Spanish missionary, Father Junipero Serra, just the other day, is on very suspect ethical grounds. Serra is credited with introducing Catholicism among the Native American communities of California, although many commentators have objected to this on the basis that he actually imposed the religion in dictatorial fashion, including beatings and even claims of genocide, and in the process wreaked incalculable damage on the whole indigenous culture of the region. The Pope also chose to overlook the fact that Serra has only been credited with one miracle (the curing of a nun's mystery disease in 1960, after she apparently prayed to Serra on her deathbed).
To me, all this smacks of political expediency (i.e. the Church needed an American-based saint for the increasingly Latino population of America). Whatever your view, though, it is difficult to sanction this kind of celebration of cultural imperialism, and a modern, thoughtful Pope should be well aware of this.