Recent Featured Videos and Articles | Eastern “Orthodoxy” Refuted | How To Avoid Sin | The Antichrist Identified! | What Fake Christians Get Wrong About Ephesians | Why So Many Can't Believe | “Magicians” Prove A Spiritual World Exists | Amazing Evidence For God | News Links |
Vatican II “Catholic” Church Exposed | Steps To Convert | Outside The Church There Is No Salvation | E-Exchanges | The Holy Rosary | Padre Pio | Traditional Catholic Issues And Groups | Help Save Souls: Donate |
"Drug traffickers pray to 'Santa Muerte' for help"
dispatch.com
"State Highway Patrol troopers stopped an eastbound tractor-trailer on Interstate 70 near Cambridge last month for swerving and having a broken tail light.
When they talked to the driver, Efrain Gama Hurtado, and his passenger, Luis Armando Ruiz, something just didn't seem right. The truck's log books didn't match their travel from California and both men seemed overly nervous for a traffic stop.
Then one of the troopers spotted a medallion hanging from Ruiz's neck. It featured a skeleton dressed as the Virgin Mary.
It was Santa Muerte, or Sacred Death, the patron saint of drug traffickers.
That necklace, as well as 'criminal indicators consistent with illegal narcotics activity,' warranted a search, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Frank Eichenlaub wrote in an affidavit. A drug-sniffing dog led to a stash of more than 66 pounds of cocaine in a hidden compartment behind the dashboard.
Hurtado 46, and Ruiz, 40, both from California, were indicted in federal court on charges of possession with intent to distribute the drug. They were being held in the Franklin County jail.
According to Eichenlaub's affidavit, Ruiz said he and Hurtado, owner of Destiny Transport, made regular trips hauling narcotics...
In one episode of the popular TV show 'Breaking Bad,' drug dealers in suits arrive in a dusty Mexican village, get out of their Mercedes and crawl on their bellies to pray at a shrine to Santa Muerte.
There are prayers to Santa Muerte. One reads, 'Holy mother death: Defend us from our enemies and protect us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.'
In the Southwest, law enforcement officials use possession of Santa Muerte paraphernalia as a probable cause for search and seizure in suspected drug-trafficking cases, Chesnut said...
Devotion to Santa Muerte went public when quesadilla vendor Enriqueta Romero placed a life-size effigy of it in front of her Mexico City house on Halloween 2001. Some accounts say the rising tide of drug-related kidnappings and gruesome killings turned many Mexicans to Santa Muerte for protection.
Sometimes, she is dressed in elaborate, jeweled robes. Other times, she holds a scythe. Statues often are carried in parades on Halloween and All Souls' Day. Sometimes the skull is real.
The number of devotees exceeds 10 million, predominately in Mexico, the U.S., and Central America, making it the fastest-growing new religious movement in the Americas, Chesnut said.
The figure is popular with women, who turn to her to find love, or to bring back or punish a straying spouse or boyfriend and wish ill will on the 'other woman.'
Although the church might disagree, many who pray to Santa Muerte for their darker wishes consider themselves devoted Catholics, Chesnut said.
He noted that Mexican esoterica shops sell more Santa Muerte figurines than they do icons of Our Lady of of Guadalupe, Mexico’s longtime patron saint, who has her own medallion."
Sign up for our free e-mail list to see future vaticancatholic.com videos and articles.
Recent Content
^