Source: International Mission Board, October 31, 2022
Casting a long shadow across one of Mexico City’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods stands a seven-story image of Santa Muerte—the Saint of Death. She takes the form of a human skeleton clad in black plastic sheeting with arms outstretched, inviting residents in from the streets to make offerings of flowers, fruit, burned cigarettes, and alcoholic drinks.
The Catholic church denounces devotion to the folk saint as a cult, but for her many worshipers, the city’s poorest-of-the-poor, Santa Muerte promises prosperity, healing, protection, and vengeance in criminal gang battles. “The bony lady,” as her followers call her, is believed to be the one who will come to collect us when it’s our time to die.
The cult of Santa Muerte was popularized by Jonathan Legaría, the ambitious son of a middle-class family in Mexico City. Always fascinated by magic and the occult, Legaría convinced many that he had healing powers. After his violent death in a hail of bullets in 2008, at just 26, the cult grew rapidly under the organization of his now-deceased mother, Enriqueta Vargas.
There are now an estimated 10 million followers—not just in Mexico, but across the Americas.
The full story includes pictures and prayer points.