Holy Death
Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte (Spanish: [ˈnwestɾa seˈɲoɾa ðe la ˈsanta ˈmweɾte]; Spanish for Our Lady of Holy Death), often shortened to Santa Muerte, is a new religious movement, female deity, folk-Catholic saint, and folk saint in Mexican folk Catholicism and Neopaganism. A personification of death, she is associated with healing, protection, and safe delivery to the afterlife by her devotees. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church and Evangelical pastors, her following has become increasingly prominent since the turn of the 21st century.
Santa Muerte almost always appears as a female skeletal figure, clad in a long robe and holding one or more objects, usually a scythe and a globe. Her robe can be of any color, as more specific images of the figure vary widely from devotee to devotee and according to the ritual being performed or the petition being made.
Her present day following was first reported in Mexico by American anthropologists in the 1940s and was an occult practice until the early 2000s. Most prayers and other rituals have been traditionally performed privately at home. Since the beginning of the 21st century, worship has become more public, starting in Mexico City after a believer named Enriqueta Romero founded her famous Mexico City shrine in 2001. The number of believers in Santa Muerte has grown over the past two decades to an estimated 12 million followers who are concentrated in Mexico, Central America, and the United States, with a smaller contingent of followers in South America, Canada and Europe. Santa Muerte has two similar male counterparts in Latin America, the skeletal folk saints San La Muerte of Argentina and Paraguay and Rey Pascual of Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico. According to R. Andrew Chesnut, Ph.D. in Latin American history and professor of religious studies, Santa Muerte is at the center of the single fastest-growing new religious movement in the Americas.
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