Category: Santa Muerte

A former female wrestler, accused of killing 11 elderly women in the Mexican capital, had an altar to the skeletal, scythe-wielding Santa Muerte death cult figure in her home, newspapers said. Police searching the home of Juana Barraza, 48, after her arrest this week found a statue of Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, who is popular with thieves and drug smugglers, Reforma newspaper said. She has confessed to several murders, police said. Barraza, accused of being the feared “Mataviejitas,” or “Little Old Lady Killer,” sought by police for years, left offerings for the figure and also had a dead snake

NOGALES, Sonora – Not everyone fears the reaper. Vendors here sell a gruesome skeletal figure, dressed in a robe, holding the world in one hand and a scythe in the other. She is known as Santa Muerte – Saint Death or Holy Death – and her following is growing in Mexico, where chapels have sprung up over the last four years to honor her. Believers, including some Roman Catholics, also pray to her at altars in their homes. Some say she saves lives. Others claim she is the Grim Reaper, and they pray she will bring death to their enemies.

MEXICO CITY–Mexico’s government canceled the official recognition of a religious group devoted to the worship of the Santa Muerte, or “Saint Death” on Friday, arguing the group had violated its own statutes. While the cancellation will not prevent the group from continuing its religious practices, it does affect the church’s right to raise money and own property. The group, known officially as The Traditional Catholic Mex-USA Church, has no ties to the Roman Catholic church. However, when the group registered with the Interior Department in 2003, it declared its purpose was to “conserve the Holy Tridentine Mass.” A dissident priest

Devotees of a death cult, who are fighting for recognition as a religion, participate in a protest in Mexico City yesterday. MEXICO CITY – Hundreds of Mexican devotees of Saint Death – a quasi-Catholic faith that worships the skeletal figure of death – marched through downtown Mexico City yesterday to demand respect for their religion and its followers. Holding banners reading “Respect Religious Freedom” and “We are not criminals or drug addicts,” marchers drawn from some of the city’s roughest barrios carried statues of the elegantly clad Grim Reaper down the city’s main boulevard. The march was called in response

MEXICO CITY – Deep in the heart of Mexico City’s toughest neighborhood, in streets plagued by drugs and prostitution, faithful Catholics are praying to a new and fearsome saint: death itself. They come by the dozens to the Mercy Church, a former house in the Tepito neighborhood stuffed with statues and posters of the Grim Reaper, known among the devotees as St. Death. They ask La Santa Muerte for miracles, light candles and give offerings of food, liquor and cigarettes. Some bring their children, who look up with awe at the grinning skeletons and their scythes. The Roman Catholic Church

Gangsters pray to Our Lady of Death for protection on Mexico’s meanest streets The heavily tattooed Mexican thief Angel La Rata, known on the streets as the Rat, patted down the brocaded gown of the skeletal figurine and clamped a lit cigarette between its jaws as he waited for the service to begin. A twice-jailed armed robber, he is among thousands of pickpockets, car thieves, kidnappers and prostitutes in one of Mexico City’s toughest neighbourhoods who have flocked to join a booming death cult. The first day of each month, hardened criminals of the capital’s no-go Tepito neighbourhood clutch death