Pope Francis to visit relatives in northern Italy

Santa Fe, N.M., Mar 25, 2019 / 10:38 am (CNA).- The Archbishop of Santa Fe said recently that people praying to “Saint Death” won’t find the answers they’re looking for.

Archbishop John Wester told the Associated Press recently that Catholics praying to the skeletal figure, popular in Central America, may be fooled into thinking that “Santa Muerte” is an approved devotional practice in the Church.

But the practice of praying to “Saint Death” is not consistent with Catholic teaching, the archbishop said.

“It’s really wrong,” Wester told the AP.

“I think in part, it’s (because) people are looking and searching. It’s a symptom of a search looking for answers.”

“Our devotion is to the God of life,” he added.

In 2013, a Vatican official condemned devotion to “Santa Muerte,” equating it to “the celebration of devastation and of hell.”

“It’s not every day that a folk saint is actually condemned at the highest levels of the Vatican,” Andrew Chesnut, a Santa Muerte expert, told CNA in 2016.

Chesnut is the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of “Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint,” the only English academic book to date on the subject.

Despite her condemnation from on high, Santa Muerte remains increasingly popular among criminals, drug lords and those on the fringe of society, as well as cultural Catholics who maybe don’t know (or care) that she is condemned by the Church.

“She’s basically the poster girl of narco-satanic spirituality,” Chesnut said.

According to Chesnut’s estimates, Santa Muerte is the fastest growing religious movement in the Americas – and it’s all happened within the past 10-15 years.

“She was unknown to 99 percent of Mexicans before 2001, when she went public. Now I estimate there’s some 10-12 million devotees, mostly in Mexico, but also significant numbers in the United States and Central America,” he said.

Part of the attraction to Santa Muerte, as several sources familiar with the devotion explained, is that she is seen as a non-judgemental saint that can be invoked for some not-so-holy petitions.

“If somebody is going to be doing something illegal, and they want to be protected from the law enforcement, they feel awkward asking God to protect them,” Fr. Andres Gutierrez, the pastor of St. Helen parish in Rio Hondo, Texas, explained to CNA in 2016.

“So they promise something to Santa Muerte in exchange for being protected from the law.”

Devotees also feel comfortable going to her for favors of vengeance – something they would never ask of God or a canonized saint, Chesnut said.

“I think this non-judgemental saint who’s going to accept me as I am is appealing,” Chesnut said, particularly to criminals or to people who don’t feel completely accepted within the Mexican Catholic or Evangelical churches.

The cultural Catholicism of Mexico and the drug wars of the past decade also made for the perfect storm for Santa Muerte to catch on, Chesnut explained. Even Mexicans who didn’t grow up going to Mass every Sunday still have a basic idea of what Catholicism entails – Mass and Saints and prayers like the rosary, all things that have been hi-jacked and adapted by the Santa Muerte movement.

“You can almost see some of it as kind of an extreme heretical form of folk Catholicism,” he said. “In fact, I can say Santa Muerte could only have arisen from a Catholic environment.”

This, coupled with the fact that Mexican Catholics are suddenly much more familiar with death, with the recent drug wars having left upwards of 60,000 – 120,000 Mexicans dead – makes a saint of death that much more intriguing.

“Paradoxically, a lot of devotees who feel like death could be just around the corner – maybe they’re narcos, maybe they work in the street, maybe they’re security guards who might be gunned down – they ask Santa Muerte for protection.”

Her familiarity and appeal is actually part of the danger of this devotion, Fr. Gutierrez said.

“(Santa Muerte) is literally a demon with another name,” he said. “That’s what it is.”

In his own ministry, Fr. Gutierrez said he has witnessed people who “suffer greatly” following a devotion to the folk saint.

Fr. Gary Thomas, a Vatican-trained exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, told CNA in 2016 that he has also prayed with people who have had demonic trouble after praying to Santa Muerte.

“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,” he said.

Fr. Gutierrez noted that while Catholics who attend Mass and the sacraments on a regular basis tend to understand this about Santa Muerte, those in danger are the cultural Catholics who aren’t intentionally engaging in something harmful, but could be opening the door to spiritual harm nonetheless.

Besides her demonic ties, “Santa Muerte” is also a perversion of what the practice of praying to saints is all about, Fr. Ryan Kaup, a Nebraska priest active in Hispanic ministry, told CNA in 2016.

“What we venerate as saints are real people who have chosen this life to follow the will of our Lord and have done great things with their lives, and now they’re in heaven forever, and so that’s why we ask for their intercession,” Kaup said.

“So taking this devotion and this practice that we have of asking for this saint’s intercession and twisting it in such a way as to invoke this glorified image of death is really a distortion of what we believe is true intercession and truly the power of the saints.”

[…]

Pope Francis looks out at the crowd gathered below his hospital window at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on March 23, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media / Screenshot

CNA Newsroom, Mar 29, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

As hundreds of Missionaries of Mercy gathered in Rome this weekend, Pope Francis commended their distinctive ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation that continues to flourish worldwide.

Approximately 500 priests are participating in a special jubilee dedicated to their role as part of the broader 2025 Jubilee of Hope.

In a message addressed to these priests, and written while still in hospital, Pope Francis expressed his “gratitude and encouragement” for their work as special confessors who possess faculties to absolve certain sins typically reserved to the Holy See.

“Through your service,” the pontiff wrote, “you bear witness to the paternal face of God, infinitely great in love, who calls everyone to conversion and constantly renews us with His forgiveness.”

The missonaries’ March 28-30 gathering included training sessions, communal prayer, and a pilgrimage through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Pope Francis reflected on the profound connection between mercy and hope in his message. “Conversion and forgiveness are the two caresses with which the Lord wipes every tear from our eyes,” he stated. “They are the hands with which the Church embraces us sinners; they are the feet on which we walk in our earthly pilgrimage.”

The Holy Father encouraged these priests to maintain a compassionate approach in their ministry, urging them to be “attentive in listening, ready in welcoming, and steadfast in accompanying those who desire to renew their lives and return to the Lord.”

First commissioned during the 2016 Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, these priests have seen their mandate extended twice by Pope Francis. Their numbers have grown substantially, now surpassing 1,250 worldwide, with approximately 100 serving in the United States.

In Spes Non Confundit, the papal bull of indiction for the 2025 jubilee year, Pope Francis wrote that Missionaries of Mercy should “exercise their ministry by reviving hope and offering forgiveness whenever a sinner comes to them with an open heart and a penitent spirit.”

The pontiff concluded his message to the missionaries with a blessing and his customary request: “Please, do not forget to pray for me.”

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Volunteer drivers in Ukraine, working with the Vulnerable People Project evacuate vulnerable populations from war-torn areas of Ukraine. / Courtesy of Vulnerable People’s Project

Boston, Mass., Mar 10, 2022 / 06:52 am (CNA).

Jason Jones has a saying he often repeats to his staff at the humanitarian organization he founded, The Vulnerable People Project.

“The vulnerable are not weak people,” he says. “They’re strong people that have been placed in impossible situations.”

The Vulnerable People Project (VPP), which Jones describes as a Catholic apostolate animated by Catholic social teaching, was launched last year to respond to one such “impossible” situation: the humanitarian crisis that erupted after the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan, which quickly fell to the Taliban.

Now VPP is helping people escape another dire emergency: the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“We’re seeing the people of Ukraine stuck between these two powerful actors, the same way the people of Afghanistan were trapped between the United States and Taliban,” Jones, a Catholic film producer, speaker, author and activist, told CNA. 

VPP is still helping to evacuate Christians and other minorities from Afghanistan every week, Jones said. 

Now the organization is doing similar work in Ukraine, where Jones says it has transported thousands of people away from the fighting and destruction.

Many of them have Aleksi Voronin to thank for that.

The 35-year-old native of Kyiv manages a team of drivers, himself among them, who voluntarily take residents of Kyiv and Kharkiv, major Ukrainian cities now in the crosshairs of Russian forces, to the relative safety of western Ukraine or across the border into Poland.

The drivers are mostly driving vans but some passenger vehicles, as well. With the vans, Voronin said, up to a dozen passengers can be evacuated. He told CNA he’s working on getting a bus which could evacuate 50 people.

The vans are tightly packed, but Voronin says that he tries to provide the people with blankets to at least give them “minimal comfort.” He estimates that he’s helped evacuate more than 200 people, so far.

“I cannot find the right words to explain the condition of people when I pick them up,” Voronin told CNA, fighting back tears.

Providential connections

Because of VPP’s success in Afghanistan, a Ukrainian friend of Jones asked him to help rescue some family members from the Ukraine following the invasion. As a result, VPP’s newest humanitarian effort, Hope for Ukraine, was born.

Jones doesn’t speak Ukrainian, though. So getting in touch with Ukrainians on the ground posed difficulties, he said. 

But as providence would have it, one of Jones’ friends is Los Angeles comedian Irina Skaya, a Ukrainian-born American. 

“Jason said, ‘Look, we’ve been working with Afghanistan, but now this is a crisis.’ So he knew that I was super connected in Ukraine on the ground and we started evacuations,” Skaya, who is leading Hope for Ukraine, told CNA.

Skaya, who speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and English fluently, has about 200 relatives in Ukraine. Through her contacts, she was put in touch with Voronin.

Skaya had a comedy show planned in Kyiv Feb. 25-26, but that was canceled due to the Russian invasion on Feb. 24. She was supposed to be the opening act for Louis C.K. a popular American comedian.

Skaya said she always thought her purpose in life was to do comedy.

“Comedy is great. I love comedy. And when this is over, I’m gonna perform in Ukraine and try to bring as many American comedians into Ukraine as I can,” she said. 

But war has reordered her priorities. “My absolute life purpose now,” she said, “is to defend my country, to save my country, to save my people.”

How to help

Jones says that Hope for Ukraine has about 100 Ukrainian volunteers, with other volunteers coming from Poland, Ireland, the United States, and elsewhere.

Even a volunteer-driven humanitarian effort is expensive, however. Keeping Aleksi Voronin’s passenger vans and other vehicles on the road gets more costly by the day, due to rapidly rising fuel prices.

Jones told CNA that VPP has raised $15,000 for Hope for Ukraine, but has spent about $50,000 buying resources.

The organization’s response to the invasion will soon include an ambulance and a trauma team of four Emergency Medical Technicians, or EMTs, one critical care paramedic, and two ambulance drivers.

Leading the team will be Andrew Hamilton, 23, a Virginia resident who has worked as an EMT at a construction site and has served as a combat medic while he volunteered with Kurdish military units in northern Syria.

Hamilton, a devout Christian, told CNA his mission is to support the Ukrainian people and if a wounded person needs his care, “they’ll receive the best medical treatment possible.”

Donations to VPP’s Hope for Ukraine initiative can be made online at TheGreatCampaign.org. Jones said he has secured a $200,000 matching gift grant, if the organization can raise $200,000 on its own.

Somehow, Jones said, VPP will meet that goal. “We seek to stand with those who have been abandoned because it’s dangerous to serve them, or because it comes at a social cost,” he said. “When everyone else flees, that’s when we show up.”

[…]