Posted on 02/10/2016 9:24:48 AM PST by simpson96
Tultitlan (Mexico) (AFP) - Two weeks after baptizing her at a Catholic church, baby Adriana's parents put her in a white gown again for a second sacrament: This time, with Mexico's skeletal "Death Saint."
As they held the sleepy three-month-old child, a priestess sprinkled holy water infused with rose petals on her in front of 300 people under a 22-meter (72-foot) statue of the Grim Reaper-like "Santa Muerte" in a Mexico City suburb.
When Pope Francis arrives in Mexico for a five-day visit on Friday, he will find a country where devotion to Santa Muerte is growing fast despite the Vatican's rejection of the figure as blasphemous.
Every Sunday, a big crowd comes to Enriqueta Vargas' outdoor temple in Tultitlan to pray in front of the black fiber-glass statue, which was erected in 2007 in a lot and can be seen from a busy boulevard.
They leave tequila, candy and flowers at six chapels, where they pray for love, money or health. Vargas has gone a step further than at other Santa Muerte shrines in Mexico by officiating over weddings and baptisms.
Adriana's young parents, Daniel Anguiano and Lucero Aguilar, had pleaded for help from Santa Muerte during complications in the pregnancy.
"I promised her that if she gave our daughter to me in good health, I would come here in front of her to baptize her," said Anguiano, a 22-year-old Corona beer company worker.
Like many worshippers of Santa Muerte, Daniel and Lucero, 18, remain Catholic despite the Vatican's hard line against it.
"Santa Muerte is an absurdity," Cardinal Norberto Rivera, Mexico's archbishop, told AFP. "Every Christian should be in favor of life, not death."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This really should be moved to the religion forum. It will get a lot more attention and commentary.
There is a similar let us say syncretic folk saint in the Central Highlands of Guatemala called Maximon. Mayans leave offerings of alcohol, cigarettes and cash at the base of the statue of Maximon.
They think it is ethical to grow and sell drugs, they even have a narco saint.
Mexico is ISIS with a slight level of Catholicism thrown in.
What, they leave tequila?
Does the worship service include the lines “Stay thirsty, my friend”??
Given the enthusiasm of some “Roman Catholics” for sodomy & abortion, this type of thing should be no surprise. I’m surprised they don’t have black fiberglass statues of Nancy Pelosi & Ted Kennedy at this ‘shrine’ as well; surely those two qualify as ‘Death Saints’.
It’s being spread here too. When I did articles about the pot farms on our public lands by Mexican drug Cartel/Illegal aliens, there were candles, all kinds of trinkets worshiping Santa Muerte...and guns, lots of guns.
You can see some photos here, and it’s 800 miles north of the Mexican border.
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=800+miles
There’s a little bit of Aztec in every Mexican.
Indeed, I do not know how this Pope is going to stop that populist trend given he funds it with our tax money in the form of Catholic charities for illegals who are part of the gangs of drug dealers into this worship.
They have commited attrocities in that cult themselves on the level of IsIS and are going to give a very bad name to Christianity.
I saw a large Santa Muerte statue in front of a botanica in San Antonio near S Zarzamora & New Laredo Hwy..probably near to ten years ago.
Must not forget Juan Malverde, another Popular one.
The Pope should steer clear of any offers by the indios to visit the tops of some old pyramids down in the jungle.
Didn’t Carlota, the wife of Maximilian, say something about Mexico being a very un-catholic Catholic country? I can’t remember the actual words.
It’s fine where it is.
El Papa will be fine.
I am married into a Mexican family, and I can tell you that the lower end of that ethnicity (the demo crossing our borders) are infatuated with occultism and black magic. It is actually a favorite past time of the Mexican cartels and Central American street gangs.
Mexican Indian devotion to these things could be a cultic hold over from Aztec times.
This has the potential to be horrific.
To start with, Santa Muerte is a clear throwback to the Aztec gods of death and the dead. Even in the days of the Conquest, based on the ritual murder and even cannibalism associated with these gods, they were equated directly with Lucifer by the Catholic church.
The trouble is, that perhaps 2 million Mexicans are at least partially associating with this, which is turning into a death cult. If they get a charismatic leader, it could be like the Indian Thuggee, who gleefully murdered and robbed everyone they could in an orgy of blood, indifferent to caste or class. Even the English were at risk.
About the only way the US could protect itself would be by deporting every Mexican they could.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.