Is Santa Muerte Catholic?

During the early years of the Church’s mission in Mexico, there were few conversions among the natives; Christianity was the religion of the Europeans. Our Lady of Guadalupe, though, who appeared in 1531 to St. Juan Diego and requested a church to be built on the site of her apparition, was one of their own. 

When Our Lady appeared to a native man, an insignificant widower, she spoke to him in his native language, called herself his mother, and charged him with speaking for her to the religious authorities in Mexico City. In the image of herself on the tilma (Juan Diego’s cloak), Our Lady appears as a Mexican—perhaps a mestiza, of mixed native and European blood—maiden of high rank and adorned in symbols of the Aztec culture that had been suppressed by the Spanish. Within ten years of her apparitions to Juan Diego, nine million natives poured into the Church. In the centuries that followed, her image became one of the most important and enduring symbols of Mexican identity. 

Recently, a new lady has arrived in Mexico and in US cities along the border, challenging the Virgin of Guadalupe for the devotion of certain segments of the Mexican people. She’s known by many affectionate titles, such as the Bony Lady and the White Sister, but she’s commonly called Santa Muerte (Saint Death). Santa Muerte is a skeleton, androgynous in appearance but personified as feminine. Often she’s depicted wearing colorful robes and carrying a scythe, which gives her the appearance of a female Grim Reaper.  

Devotion to Santa Muerte has exploded in the past few years. R. Andrew Chesnut, a religious studies professor, estimates that Santa Muerte has gathered between ten and twelve million devotees—roughly the same number of native converts, within a comparable time span, who entered the Church in the decade following the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

To the extent that Santa Muerte is known in the United States, she’s usually believed to be a perverse patroness of the drug cartels, but her influence is much wider. She’s considered a “folk saint” to those on the margins, a miracle worker for people who have not been well-catechized in their faith or who feel disaffected from the Church for various reasons. One woman who spoke with Chesnut said of Santa Muerte, “She understands us because she is a battle-axe . . . like us.” 

Chesnut, initially interested in writing about Our Lady of Guadalupe before turning to Santa Muerte, said that “at first glance [Santa Muerte] seemed to be [Our Lady of Guadalupe’s] antithesis, a sort of anti-Virgin.” But he eventually dismissed this observation, and his book is sympathetic to Santa Muerte and her followers. 

The allusion is chillingly apt, though: Santa Muerte is indeed an “anti-Virgin,” and the rise of devotion to her has alarmed bishops in Mexico. The US Bishop Michael J. Sis of San Angelo, Texas, said in a statement on his diocesan website: 

We must distinguish true saints from false saints and superstitions. . . . Rather than asking Santa Muerte for protection or favors, we should turn our life over to Jesus Christ, repent of our sins, make a sincere confession, follow God’s commandments, and trust in the grace of God. Catholics and other Christians should get rid of any Santa Muerte statues, candles, or other paraphernalia.

Some clergy have used stronger language than Bishop Sis in their denunciations of Santa Muerte. Fr. Andres Gutierrez of the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, told Catholic News Agency, “[Santa Muerte] is literally a demon with another name. . . . That’s what it is.” Fr. Gary Thomas, an exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, California, told CNA, “I have had a number of people who have come to me as users of this practice and found themselves tied to a demon or demonic tribe.

If Santa Muerte is, in fact, a distorted image of the Virgin of Guadalupe—if she’s an anti-Virgin—then perhaps one of the keys to challenging devotion to her might be to present the true image of the Blessed Mother to the people she claimed for her own. 

Santa Muerte is a skeleton who invites her followers to embrace death as an end in itself. But Our Lady of Guadalupe is shown to be pregnant with her divine Son. She’s surrounded by the sun, the moon, and the stars, heavenly symbols that point us to our eternal destiny of union with God. 

Santa Muerte is regarded as a miracle worker and is importuned for protection and favors. Our Lady of Guadalupe is not as an androgynous trickster performing wonders but as a loving mother who occasionally offers miracles as a means of drawing all of her children to her divine Son, who is the way, the truth, and the life for every human soul (John 14:6). 

Our Lady of Guadalupe has been likened to the woman of Revelation 12, attacked by a dragon who wanted to snatch her child from her as soon as he was born. In that interpretation, Santa Muerte may be just one more means by which the dragon attempts to steal the children of the Virgin. In the end, though, we are assured that he won’t succeed. 

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