Skeleton Saint Gaining Popularity in U.S.

Long popular in Mexico, the skeleton saint La Santa Muerte is gaining a robust following north of the border among many non-Latinos, many of them shunning organized religion.

Wearing a black nun's robe and holding a scythe in one hand, Santa Muerte appeals to people seeking all manner of otherworldly help: from fending off wrongdoing and carrying out vengeance to stopping lovers from cheating and landing better jobs. 

According to the Associated Press:

"Her growth in the United States has been extraordinary," said Andrew Chesnut, author of Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint and the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. "Because you can ask her for anything, she has mass appeal and is now gaining a diverse group of followers throughout the country. She's the ultimate multi-tasker." 

The saint is especially popular among Mexican-American Catholics, rivaling that of St. Jude and La Virgen de Guadalupe as a favorite for miracle requests, even as the Catholic Church in Mexico denounces Santa Muerte as satanic, experts say. 

The origins of La Santa Muerte are unclear. Some followers say she is an incarnation of an Aztec goddess of death who ruled the underworld. Some scholars say she originated in medieval Spain through the image of La Parca, a female Grim Reaper, who was used by friars for the later evangelization of indigenous populations in the Americas.

 For decades, though, La Santa Muerte remained an underground figure in isolated regions of Mexico and served largely as an unofficial Catholic saint that women called upon to help with cheating spouses.

Click here for the article and more photos.

Leper-Treating Priest to be Sainted

Father Damien ~ the Belgian priest who ministered to lepers in Hawaii until he succumbed to the disease himself in 1889 ~ will be canonized as a saint in October.

Born Joseph de Veuster in 1840, he took the name Damien and went to Hawaii in 1864 to join other missionaries and minister to leprosy patients on Molokai island, where some 8,000 people had been banished amid an epidemic in Hawaii in the 1850s.

He eventually contracted the disease ~ also known as Hansen's disease ~ and died in 1889 at age 49. "He went there knowing that he could never return," The Rev. Alfred Bell, who spearheaded Damien's canonization cause, told Vatican Radio. "He suffered a lot, but he stayed."

Miracles Ascribed to Father Damien

Father Damien was beatified ~ a step toward sainthood ~ in 1995 by Pope John Paul II after the Vatican declared that the 1987 recovery of a nun of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary was a miracle. The nun recovered after praying to Damien.

After beatification, a second miracle is needed for sainthood.

In July, Pope Benedict XVI declared that a Honolulu woman's recovery in 1999 from terminal lung cancer was the miracle needed for the priest to be made a saint. She too had prayed to Father Damien.

Click here for the Associated Press article.
Photo shows Father Damien two months before his death of leprosy.