Death to Santa Muerte: The Vatican vs. the Mexican Skeleton Saint R. Andrew Chesnut - HuffPost Latino
go to original May 20, 2013

Nuestra Santisima Muerte (Opificio Ciclope)

It was the declaration of Santa Muerte as an enemy of the Mexican state by former president Felipe Calderon that first sparked my interest in the skeletal folk saint. Identifying Santa Muerte as a "narco-saint" responsible for protecting certain drug cartels, the Calderon administration ordered the army to bulldoze some 40 shrines along the U.S.-Mexican border in March 2009. Now, four years later, the Vatican has followed suit and condemned Saint Death as an "infernal" and "blasphemous" figure worshiped by Mexican narcos.

Over the past month, the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, has denounced the mushrooming cult of the skeleton saint on four separate occasions. The Italian prelate, whom veteran Vatican watcher John Allen recently called "the most interesting man in the Church" and even profiled as papible, first inveighed against the "Bony Lady" (one of Saint Death's most common monikers) during an interview in mid-April with a Peruvian Catholic news site (Aciprensa).

Rejecting her (she's a female figure) as "sinister and infernal," one of the Vatican's most powerful men called for both Church and society to mobilize against devotion to Saint Death. "Everyone is needed to put the brakes on this phenomenon, including families, churches and society in its totality." The cardinal posited that devotion to Santa Muerte "is the celebration of devastation and of hell."

Ravasi, an influential member of the Curia, then took his message directly to Mexicans during his four-day visit there last week to lead his pet project, the "Courtyard of the Gentiles," a Vatican program designed to engage with and evangelize non-believers. Mexico became the first non-European country to host a Courtyard program. With three further condemnations of the saint of death on her home turf, the Courtyard of the Gentiles quickly morphed into the Court of Heresy in which Santa Muerte was pronounced guilty of blasphemy against religion (read Catholicism) and given the death penalty.

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