Folk saint

(CC) Photo: Manuel Carlos Villalba
Bottles of water are offered to Difunta Correa in commemoration of her death by thirst.

A folk saint is a deceased person or other spiritually powerful entity that is venerated as a saint but who has not been officially canonized by the Church. Like the officially recognized saints, folk saints act as intercessors with God on behalf of supplicants but many also act directly in the lives of their devotees. Frequently, their actions in life and in death distinguish them from their canonized counterparts: their ranks are filled by folk healers, sinners, indigenous spirits and folk heroes. Some are as likely to grant a request to curse an enemy or protect a drug runner as to heal a family member. Folk saints occur throughout the Catholic world, but they are especially popular in Latin America, where most have small followings, but a few are celebrated at the national or even international level. Template:TOC-left

Origins

Even prior to the split of Christianity from Judaism, prophets and holy people were honored with shrines. This tradition continued among the early Christians, who visited the shrines of martyrs to ask for their intercession with God. These early saints were not canonized, however. It was not until the end of the first millennium that the sanctity of martyrs and other venerated persons began to be formally recognized by the Church.

Thus, there is a precedent for the veneration of unofficial saints dating back to the earliest days of Catholicism. Folk saints gain notoriety in much the same manner as the early saints did, and indeed, in much the same way that later canonized saints have first become popular. Word of mouth spreads the news of miracles or good works performed during the person's life and his or her popularity is likely to spread as miracles continue after death. For example, Rosa de Lima, the first American saint, attracted "mass veneration beginning almost at the moment of the mystic's death" but was not until half of a century later.

As the Church spread, it incorporated regions that celebrated deities and heroes that were not part of Catholic tradition. Many of those figures were incorporated into the local variety of Catholicism that resulted, meaning that the ranks of official saints came to include a number of non-Catholic or even fictional persons. An effort was made in 1969 to purge such figures from the official list of saints, though at least some probably remain. Many folk saints have their origins in this same mixing of Catholic traditions and local cultural and religious traditions.

The direct action that folk saints in Latin America take in the lives of their devotees — as opposed to merely acting as intercessors with God as do the official saints — provides an example of this syncretism. During the Counter-Reformation in Europe, the Council of Trent released a decree "On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics, of Saints, and on Sacred Images," which explained that in Catholic doctrine images and relics of the saints are to be used by worshipers to help them contemplate the saints and the virtues that they represent but that those images and relics do not actually embody the saints. In Mesoamerican tradition, on the other hand, representation meant embodiment rather than mere resemblance, as it did in Europe. Thus, for Mesoamerican peoples images took on the characters and spirits that they represented whilst for European Catholics this was considered idolatry. The Mesoamerican perspective lives on in the visits that Catholic devotees pay to folk saints in the region. Visitors frequently interact with representations of folk saints as though they were interacting with an actual person, observing the proper etiquette for speaking to a patron or a friend depending on the spirit's disposition, shaking hands, or offering it a cigarette or a drink.

Characteristics

Due to their syncretic origins, folk saints tend to be much more ambivalent than the members of the official Catholic pantheon and many would never be considered for canonization by the Church. This ambivalence is attributable in part to the syncretic mixing of traditions discussed above, but it also has much to do with their relationship to their devotees. With the exception of a few whose histories seem to have been invented from whole cloth, folk saints come from the same marginal communities as their followers. They suffered poverty and injustice and many died as victims of violence. In death, they continue to be part of the communities that exist at the margins of society and they act in a more worldly, more pragmatic, less dogmatic fashion than their official counterparts.

Folk saints are also associated with the indigenous nature spirits and deities that permeated the landscape and cultures before the spread of Catholicism to the region through the syncretism that created them. In fact, to distinguish canonized saints from folk saints, the latter are often called "spirits" instead of saints.

In spite of their differences, folk saints often share space with their canonized counterparts and devotions to the official saints frequently take on aspects of devotions to folk saints. In certain areas, representations of the saints, embodying the spirits of the saints that are represented, take on a life of their own: Lois Parkinson Zamora points out that images of the same saint frequently take on different histories in different towns of central Mexico.

Devotions

One might pay a visit to a folk saint for any number of reasons, including general requests for good health and good luck, the lifting of a curse, or protection on the road, but most folk saints have specialties for which their help is particularly sought. Difunta Correa, for example, specializes in helping her followers to acquire new homes and businesses. Juan Bautista Morillo helps gamblers in Venezuela and Juan Soldado watches over border crossings between Mexico and the United States. This is not so different from the canonized saints — St. Benedict, for example, is the patron saint of agricultural workers — but it would be hard to find a canonized saint to look after narcotraffickers, as does Jesus Malverde. In fact, many folk saints attract devotees precisely because they respond to requests that the official saints are unlikely to respond to. As James Griffith writes, "One needs ask for help where the help is likely to be effective." So long as followers come before them with faith and perform the proper devotions, some folk saints are as willing to place a curse on a person as to lift one.

Offerings to folk saints might consist of a very wide range of items, which includes but is not limited to the votive candles offered to the canonized saints. They frequently reflect something of the spirit's former life. Difunta Correa, who died of thirst, is given bottles of water. Maximon and the spirit of Pancho Villa are both offered cigarettes and alcohol. Teddy bears and toys are left at the tomb of a little boy called Carlitos in a cemetery in Hermosillo, Mexico.

As long as the spirits come through for their followers, their devotees will keep coming back. Word of mouth spreads news of cures and good fortune following petitions to a folk saint and particularly responsive spirits are likely to gain a large following. Not all remain popular, however. While official saints remain canonized regardless of their popularity, folk saints that lose their devotees through their failure to respond to petitions might fade from memory entirely.