By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
The Archdiocese of Mexico issued a statement last week saying that the increasingly popular devotion to “Saint Death” is not compatible with the Catholic faith, and added that St. Jude Thaddeus, known worldwide as the patron saint of lost causes, is not the patron saint of criminals or drug lords.
Despite the Church’s attempt to stop it, devotion to Saint Death has been growing in Mexico for the last 10 years with more than 40 shrines springing up in Mexico City and about 400 nationwide. The devotion has also spread into the U.S. with five prayer groups in California, Oregon and Washington, DC.
Devotion to the macabre saint sprang out of violent drug-infested Mexican neighborhoods where people live with death daily. Devotees regard Saint Death as an angel who kills people on God’s orders, a being they like to compare to the Archangels Gabriel and Michael. They have even given their new saint a feast day – August 15.
The devotion is closely linked with witchcraft and usually depicts Saint Death as a skeleton draped in veils. People come to her makeshift shrines to light candles, pray for miracles, and bring offerings of food, liquor and cigarettes.
“The people who live here are people who have problems, and death is a very real and close thing to them,” said Arturo Garcia, a “priest” of Saint Death, in a 2004 interview with USA Today. “For us, Saint Death is an angel of God, a messenger.”
A whole cottage industry has grown up around the devotion with vendors selling Grim Reaper T-shirts sporting the “Prayer to Saint Death” on the very doorstep of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of Mexico’s holiest shrines.
The Catholic Church has been trying to stamp out the practice for years. “It has become a fad, and it’s growing very quickly,” said Sergio Roman, an official who oversees the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Mexico City. “People have taken death and personified it. They’ve made it almost like a god.”
The Nov. 3 clarification by the archdiocese makes it clear that devotion to Saint Death is not compatible with Catholicism.
The statement also addresses another popular fad among Mexican drug lords and other criminals to declare St. Jude Thaddeus as their patron saint.
“In no way would this saint be interceding before God in heaven for those who act contrary to the commandments of Christ, violating the precepts of Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not commit adultery,” the statement says.
The archdiocese added that true devotion to St Jude “is completely the opposite of the devotion to ‘Saint Death,’ as Christ himself overcame death in his glorious rising from the tomb, promising eternal life to those who keep the commandments of the law of God.”
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