Brownsville, Texas, Nov 4, 2017 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- They call her Santa Muerte (‘Holy Death’ or ‘Saint Death’), but she’s no saint.
Literally.
The skeletal female figure has a growing devotion in Mexico, Central America, and some places in the United States, but don’t be fooled by the Mary-like veil or the holy-sounding name.
She’s not a recognized saint by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, in 2013, a Vatican official condemned devotion to her, equating it to “the celebration of devastation and of hell.”
“It’s not every day that a folk saint is actually condemned at the highest levels of the Vatican,” Andrew Chesnut, a Santa Muerte expert who has been studying the devotion for more than eight years, told CNA.
Chesnut is the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of “Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint,” the only English academic book to date on the subject.
Despite her condemnation from on high, Santa Muerte remains increasingly popular among criminals, drug lords and those on the fringe of society, as well as cultural Catholics who maybe don’t know (or care) that she is condemned by the Church.
“She’s basically the poster girl of narco-satanic spirituality,” Chesnut said.
According to Chesnut’s estimates, Santa Muerte is the fastest growing religious movement in the Americas – and it’s all happened within the past 10-15 years.
“She was unknown to 99 percent of Mexicans before 2001, when she went public. Now I estimate there’s some 10-12 million devotees, mostly in Mexico, but also significant numbers in the United States and Central America,” he said.
The roots of Santa Muerte
Although she has recently exploded in popularity, Santa Muerte has been referenced in Mexican culture since Spanish colonial times, when Catholic colonizers, looking to evangelize the native people of Mexico, brought over female Grim Reaper figures as a representation of death, Chesnut said.
But the Mayan and Aztec cultures already had death deities, and so the female skeletal figure became adopted into the culture as a kind of hybrid death saint.
She’s also mentioned twice in the historical records of the Inquisition, when Spanish Catholic inquisitors found and destroyed a shrine to Santa Muerte in Central Mexico. After that, Santa Muerte disappeared from historical records for more than a century, only to resurface, in a relatively minor way, in the 1940s.
“From the 1940s to 1980s, researchers exclusively report Santa Muerte (being invoked) for love miracles,” Chesnut said, such as women asking the folk saint to bring back their cheating husbands.
She then faded into obscurity for a few more decades, until the drug wars brought her roaring back.
What’s the appeal of a saint of death?
Part of the attraction to Santa Muerte, as several sources familiar with the devotion explained, is that she is seen as a non-judgemental saint that can be invoked for some not-so-holy petitions.
“If somebody is going to be doing something illegal, and they want to be protected from the law enforcement, they feel awkward asking God to protect them,” explained Fr. Andres Gutierrez, the pastor of St. Helen parish in Rio Hondo, Texas.
“So they promise something to Santa Muerte in exchange for being protected from the law.”
Devotees also feel comfortable going to her for favors of vengeance – something they would never ask of God or a canonized saint, Chesnut said.
“I think this non-judgemental saint who’s going to accept me as I am is appealing,” Chesnut said, particularly to criminals or to people who don’t feel completely accepted within the Mexican Catholic or Evangelical churches.
The cultural Catholicism of Mexico and the drug wars of the past decade also made for the perfect storm for Santa Muerte to catch on, Chesnut explained. Even Mexicans who didn’t grow up going to Mass every Sunday still have a basic idea of what Catholicism entails – Mass and Saints and prayers like the rosary, all things that have been hi-jacked and adapted by the Santa Muerte movement.
“You can almost see some of it as kind of an extreme heretical form of folk Catholicism,” he said. “In fact, I can say Santa Muerte could only have arisen from a Catholic environment.”
This, coupled with the fact that Mexican Catholics are suddenly much more familiar with death, with the recent drug wars having left upwards of 60,000 – 120,000 Mexicans dead – makes a saint of death that much more intriguing.
“Paradoxically, a lot of devotees who feel like death could be just around the corner – maybe they’re narcos, maybe they work in the street, maybe they’re security guards who might be gunned down – they ask Santa Muerte for protection.”
Why she’s no saint
Her familiarity and appeal is actually part of the danger of this devotion, Fr. Gutierrez said.
“(Santa Muerte) is literally a demon with another name,” he said. “That’s what it is.”
In his own ministry, Fr. Gutierrez said he has witnessed people who “suffer greatly” following a devotion to the folk saint.
Fr. Gary Thomas, a Vatican-trained exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, told CNA that he has also prayed with people who have had demonic trouble after praying to Santa Muerte.
“I have had a number of people who have come to me as users of this practice and found themselves tied to a demon or demonic tribe,” he said.
Fr. Gutierrez noted that while Catholics who attend Mass and the sacraments on a regular basis tend to understand this about Santa Muerte, those in danger are the cultural Catholics who aren’t intentionally engaging in something harmful, but could be opening the door to spiritual harm nonetheless.
Elizabeth Beltran is the parish secretary at Cristo Rey Church, a predominantly Latino Catholic parish in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Beltran, who grew up in Mexico and whose family is still in Mexico, said she started noticing Santa Muerte about 15-20 years ago, but she hasn’t yet noticed the presence of the devotion in the United States.
Besides narcos and criminals, the folk saint also appeals to poor, cultural Mexican Catholics or those who are simply looking for something to believe in, Beltran said.
“People who don’t know their faith very well, it’s very easy to convince them” to pray to Santa Muerte, she said. It’s common practice in Mexico for people to mix superstitious practices with Catholic prayers like the Our Father or the Hail Mary, in order to gain trust in the Catholic culture.
Besides her demonic ties, she’s also a perversion of what the practice of praying to saints is all about, said Fr. Ryan Kaup, a priest with Cristo Rey parish.
“What we venerate as saints are real people who have chosen this life to follow the will of our Lord and have done great things with their lives, and now they’re in heaven forever, and so that’s why we ask for their intercession,” Fr. Kaup said.
“So taking this devotion and this practice that we have of asking for this saint’s intercession and twisting it in such a way as to invoke this glorified image of death is really a distortion of what we believe is true intercession and truly the power of the saints.”
Because of her growing popularity in the United States, Fr. Gutierrez said he is hoping that bishops and Catholic leaders in the U.S. become more aware of the danger of the Santa Muerte devotion and start condemning it publically.
“I would love to hear something on a national level, from the U.S. conference of Catholic bishops or from local bishops speaking about it publicly,” he said. “I think that would be one way to really call it to attention.”
Fr. Thomas added that honoring a saint of death is a corruption and distortion of what Christians belief about Jesus, who came to give us eternal life.
“‘Saint Death’ is an oxymoron. God is a God of the living, not the dead.”
This article was originally published on CNA Oct. 30, 2016.
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Seitz’s position (and that of the majority of US bishops, since they elected him as their representative on this issue) is nothing less than an endorsement of open-borders mayhem. CNA would doubtlessly consider it disrespectful to ask His Excellency if he thinks there ought to be any restrictions, quantitative or qualitative, on immigration to America. He would refuse to answer anyway, but we know.
His list of harmful measures is bogus. Unaccompanied children have been exposed to the greatest dangers imaginable as they are smuggled north by drug dealers and pimps. Almost all the asylum claims are phony. People who enter a country illegally should expect to be detained and deported. They certainly have no right to employment in a country where their presence is illegal. Of course, Seitz has no concerns about the welfare of the American people whose wages are being undercut, neighborhoods are being made unsafe and whose country is being turned into a vast, incoherent Third World dump. All of this will only make life more miserable for all parties, with the possible exceptions of the oligarchs and their well-connected flunkies like the ones shown in photo.
When have any of these bishops condemned Pope Francis for praising the tyrannical governments that exacerbated the poverty that increased the desperation of the migrants?
“The provisions discussed,” wrote Seitz, “underscore the extreme nature of this bill, its incompatibility with Catholic social teaching, and its inconsistency with our nation’s broadly bipartisan commitment to humanitarian protection.”
These official statements by “Bishop” Seitz and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and its Committee on Migration are flagrant and outright lies that in no way, shape, form, or fashion represent Catholic social teaching or the values of the United States. What they do represent is approval, support, and encouragement of unrestricted invasion by illegal alien invaders, almost all of whom are single men in their 20’s and 30’s, from almost 190 countries around the globe, including Islamist and Communist terrorists; virtually total control of this country’s by barbarically criminal drug cartels profiting in the billions of dollars annually from human trafficking, fentanyl and methamphetamine drug trafficking; the sex slavery of children and women and the massive rape and sexual exploitation of hundreds of thousands of children and women seeking to avail themselves of illegal entry to this country; the collapse of social welfare, hospital, and health care facilities throughout the entire Southern border as well as in virtually every major city in this country; the corruption of elections throughout this country by millions of fraudulent votes; and spread of documented deadly infections such as tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhoea, leprosy, polio, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, or severe acute respiratory syndromes.
Is it any wonder that Catholics who read such cynical propaganda from “Bishop” Seitz and his fellow hirelings at the USCCB are scandalized and outraged when they learn that billions of dollars of their taxpayer money is being paid every year to carry on this sordid charade? For example, Catholic Charities had revenues last year of $4.7 billion, $2.9 billion of which came from the U.S. government for illegal immigration support.
Every year over the past 10 years the cry has grown louder and louder that there is an ape Church which has eclipsed the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church in the Vatican with its world-wide sexual perversions, stunning financial crimes and corruption, and almost daily denials and deformations of dogma and doctrine. It is actions like these of “Bishop” Seitz and the USCCB that only extend and confirm these realities.
I think that the doors to our country need to be open to those wishing to immigrate and become hard-working American citizens. Due to legalized abortion (69-72 million killed since 1972) and Americans choosing to remain childless or limiting their families to 1 or 2 children (or discovering that they are unable to conceive for various reasons, including waiting until late in life to try to conceive), our population is decreasing. The Baby Boomer generation (my generation) is still with us and many of us who were born in the late 1950s and early 1960s are just now coming to the age of retirement–and many of us do NOT wish to continue working (or cannot work due to various physical/mental conditions). WE NEED PEOPLE TO DO THE WORK THAT KEEPS OUR NATION GOING! The shortage of medical professionals, especially in the non-nursing fields (lab, X-Ray, respiratory, MRI, Physical Therapy assistants, etc.) is alarming–if the nation knew how short-staffed many medical labs are, there would be panic. And the various industries are short-staffed–in Missouri, a factory is supposed to be opening that will offer employment to 10,000 workers–they are counting on immigrants (primarily Mexican) and are preparing housing and other services to assist them as they move to Missouri. The Catholic Church is also preparing, as one of the parishes is scheduled to become a Hispanic parish. The need for workers in all fields is huge! WE NEED MORE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY! Yes, stop the drug lords, the mobs, the sex-traffickers, and street gang recruiters from getting into this country, but everyone else who wants to come to the U.S. and become Americans should be welcomed and given the assistance to assimilate into our great country and join us as we work and play!! I find it hypocritical that the Republicans want to save the unborn but reject the immigrants. They should welcome ALL human beings. (I am a registered Republican.) We have plenty of room in the U.S.!
Well, in principle yes Mrs. Sharon. We need immigration but we need to do it through reasonable legal channels as our neighbors do. Canada being an example.
Mexico has pretty strict requirements re. immigration & rules for foreign nationals residing in their country.
Mexico is no longer a Third World nation & their birth rates have plummeted also. Mexico will be looking for young people to fill their future workforce too & they should be looking to accommodate more Latin American migrants rather than sending them North to be preyed upon further by cartels.
A truly disheartening stand by these bishops [I’m confidant not all agree]. Flagrantly socialistic in tone. With all the horrors committed at the border, child exploitation, trafficking, fentanyl they stand smilingly in unison, hold hands with the greatest purveyor of in utero infanticide, perversion, sexual mutilation of children the world has known.
Of course, the bill has no chance of clearing the Senate much less being signed into law, so the bishops have no cause for concern.
Title 42, a pandemic-era public health policy that placed restrictions on immigrants entering the US, comes to an end 11 May. The public health legislation was issued by the TRUMP administration and denied refugee status to migrants on the US’ southern border. The policy’s end comes as the Biden administration is ending the Covid public health emergency nationally.
I ask, since the illegal immigrants are coming mostly from Central American countries whose COVID testing is suspect, at best, should President Biden lift Title 42?
CNN: “What will happen if Title 42 is lifted? Officials predict that lifting Title 42 is likely to spur a significant increase in the number of migrants trying to cross into the US. One reason for the expected spike: Many migrants who were sent back to Mexico under the policy are desperate and losing patience.” Can we honor the saying on Lady Liberty?
““Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
You know Morgan, Mexico is no longer a Third World country and they can lend a hand in offering other Latin American migrants a place to live and work. Especially folks escaping the situation in Venezuela.
Immigration through proper channels…not enmassed to repeatedly rush the borders of the southern states. Biden didn’t end the Covid emergency; if he could he would permanently extend such a power grab.
Ellis Island and the immigrants from Europe were radically different from those currently swarming US borders. Today’s illegals, from Federal government data, will rely on services and aid that did not exist one-hundred years ago. There are no language requirements and the idea of assimilation exists where?