First, a sheepish confession. I was first drawn to these three because St. Rosa de Lima had been a childhood idol. I grew up Roman Catholic in Latin America and New Mexico, where she was many little Catholic girls’ shining star, a world-famous, beautiful holy woman from our land and culture, not Europe.

Here, she’s even more. She’s part of a trio (with others less known in their circle) honored in the Great Cloud of Witnesses last week (August 23, just before her death date on August 24). As different as they were, they were directly connected to one another in life and loom in importance together for their role in world history—and for today.

Why today? Each, from extraordinarily different social circumstances, confronted the social controls and tensions of their common world, one with a diversity of class, ethnicity, and race that is familiar today around the globe. Despite their differences, all three, profoundly devout and service-oriented, balanced secluded contemplation with service, a theme that runs through several of these Reflections. All three were extraordinarily ascetic in their own lives, even with the option (and even requirement) of richer alternatives. All three engaged with a complex world with humility, compassion, and sympathy for difference, attributes that won worldwide reverence in their own turbulent time. For the same reasons, each is an admirable guide for our own.

Their time and geographic location shaped their lives and reputation. So I build a picture of their world to help to understand all three.

THE GROWING PAINS OF A POWERFUL NEW SPANISH COLONY

Toribio, Martín, and Rosa lived in pivotal decades of the late 16th century to the early 17th.  Spain had been a world leader since its Reconquest of Muslim territories in Iberia (1492) and had amassed fabulous wealth from certain colonies claimed in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The Spanish Crown worked closely with the Vatican to colonize and evangelize its approved territories.

By the 1560s, however, Spain and the Vatican moved to implement the massive reforms established at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) as a Counter-Reformation to react to the Protestant Reformation. Among the most relevant to the Spanish colonies: to give even greater emphasis on evangelism among indigenous populations, to clarify and enforce doctrine, and to rid the “New World” of rampant corruption and abuses by civilians, government, and clergy.

Chief among their targets was Peru, claimed and occupied in the 1530s. Established as the Viceroyalty of Peru, claiming all of South America except for Venezuela and Portuguese Brazil, this area was now past its initial conquest phase, with its wars with the ruling Inca and power struggles among the Spaniards. Peru’s importance: vast mineral wealth (mainly silver and its needed companion for alloying, mercury) that drew multitudes despite serious challenges: earthquakes, pirates, isolated mining towns with unscrupulous opportunists, and a resentful, diverse indigenous population throughout.

The new Spanish capital had been built on a site chosen for its adjacent seaport and the fertile river valley of Rimaq, a Quechua name that evolved into Lima, eclipsing the Spanish name, City of the [Three] Kings. Lima had exploded with commercial energy and the vast administrative power of the government and church. By 1546 Lima was promoted to the level of metropolitan archdiocese with huge territories well beyond the metropolis: 18,000 square miles of a diverse, difficult, and largely unexplored terrain (from deserts to mountains and tropical forests). It was the largest and most important see of the Southern Hemisphere.

Peru’s society had evolved in the process. Lima, a post-Conquest boomtown now featured a diverse population with adventurers and soldiers who passed through or settled with often-unconventional mixed-race families. After 60 years there were generations of criollos (Spaniards born in Peru), mestizos (Spanish and indigenous), and mulattos (Spanish and African), in a society stratified by race, with white on top as in many colonies. Slavery, indigenous and African, was common; so were freed Africans with limited social mobility. Most filled the growing ranks of the city’s poor.

Central to the lives of all was the Church. Which brings us to the first personality in our story. 

A MOST UNEXPECTED REFORMER

Toribio de Mogrovejo (1538-1606) stands on top of the social stratum as the supreme Church authority in vast Peru, yet—despite official images like those shown here—pursued his call as a humble pastor.

Unlike Rosa and Martín, he was born in Spain of pure noble blood, trained in secular and canon law, and became a professor of law at Salamanca. Deeply devout since childhood and a famous, brilliant jurist, he was appointed by King Philip II as presiding inquisitor at Granada in 1579. His performance quickly defied the stereotype of the rigid persecutor. He was as humble, prudent, compassionate, and persuasive as he was exacting. The combination so impressed the King that in 1580 he approached Toribio to become the second Archbishop of Peru though he was neither clergy nor missionary. When the Pope supported the nomination, Toribio relented, quickly moved towards ordination as secular clergy and arrived in Peru in 1581 at the age of 42.

Once again, he went against precedent to establish direct contact with the community under his care. Driven by the brevity of mortal time and a sense of call to spread the faith and to correct the abuses of the existing society, he traveled on foot to Lima (almost 800 miles from Paita, his port of entry) to familiarize himself with the territory. He was in the field for 11 of his first 17 months as archbishop. In the 25 years of his tenure he reportedly crossed the entire archdiocese 3 times, preaching, baptizing, and confirming almost ½ million people, including Martín and Rosa.

When traveling, he lived ascetically, without food and sleep, often sick and threatened by hostiles—unlike official European images like the one shown here! Much like the first Dominican friars in Mexico, to pursue his evangelical mission he learned local dialects and commissioned a trilingual catechism (Spanish, Quechua, and Aymara). With what he witnessed in the field, he chose the radical pro-Indian reformist program of Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas to support indigenous rights. His first three Councils of Lima (1582-83) legislated against abuses by the clergy and civil government, bringing him the trust and reverence of native people as a genuine and effective champion. He exhorted the clergy, “Remember you are shepherds, not butchers! You are to treat the indios not as slaves, but rather as free people and vassals of the King.” His actions against clergy and government officials, however, predictably earned enemies who defamed him in Spain—for him, as he commented to the King, the true work of the devil, not the indios’ worship of idols.

To benefit his far-flung communities, Toribio built roads, hospitals, schoolhouses, chapels, and convents. In 1591 he founded the first seminary in the Western Hemisphere that perhaps aimed to educate Europeans in the character of the Americas. The seminary’s requirement of learning indigenous languages, however, suggests it did not accept native candidates, a longtime goal of pro-Indian missionaries that was still reportedly unmet in Peru in the 20th century. 

Most of all, Toribio wanted to relieve human suffering, not to eliminate idolatry. He was more pastor than missionary, much less archbishop, reaching his flock as his true call.

He died in the field in 1606 at the age of 68, with an impressive number and range of achievements. However his successful advocacy for the native communities, and their trust in him, were chief among them.

Toribio’s relatively swift beatification (1697) and canonization (1726) attests to the importance of Peru within the Catholic world of that time and of a modern clerical figure who achieved and embodied the ideals of the Counter-Reformation. Just as telling, it is said that today’s missionaries and scholars might vaguely recognize his name but that very name makes today’s Peruvians smile. 

FROM LIMA’S UNDERCLASS TO ITS HOLY MAN

Martín de Porres, in dramatic contrast to Toribio, emerged from the bottom of Lima’s colonial society. He was the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman who participated in the Conquest and reputedly served as governor of Panama, Don Juan de Porres. His mother, Ana Velázquez, was a Panamanian freedwoman of mixed blood—African and possibly indigenous. There are different stories about this family and where they lived (including Quito). Don Juan eventually acknowledged Martín and may have lived with or supported the family intermittently. Ana and the ultimately two children (a daughter born subsequently) lived mostly without him in extreme poverty.

Martin’s subsequent life, limited by his obvious mixed race, was shaped by three important factors. Despite his own poverty, he had been exceptionally generous since childhood, giving precious food purchased at the market for the family to homeless. At 12, apprenticed to a barber-surgeon (the forerunner of the modern surgeon), he developed healing skills that he applied to all throughout his life. At 15, he followed through on his profound piety since childhood to devote himself to monastic life. Disqualified for ordination by his mixed blood, he was accepted at the Dominican Convent of the Holy Rosary (also known as Santo Domingo) as a tertiary, a lay brother. Reportedly, Toribio himself overruled the racial policy on Martín’s behalf. Martín was later invited to join as a full brother. Some accounts say he accepted, others, that he refused out of humility.

Throughout, Martín was an active contemplative: praying or practicing penitential discipline (self-flagellation) for hours then engaging in everyday activity. He undertook the most menial tasks with such grace that he became known as “Fray Escoba [Brother Broom].” He reportedly explained, “Everything, even sweeping, scraping vegetables, weeding a garden and waiting on the sick could be a prayer, if it were offered to God.” He served as almoner to publicly solicit money. There his distinctive looks and genuine humility imparted an uncanny charisma: He drew astonishing daily sums—some say the equivalent of $2000—not only for the convent but for the needy outside the walls.

He was eventually charged with the infirmary where his healing skills attracted a wide following across the social spectrum, from plague-stricken homeless to the Archbishop of Mexico. When scolded by a friar for contaminating his bed with a plague victim, he allegedly responded, “Compassion . . . is preferable to cleanliness.” He treated all with equal compassion, without rancor for his marginalization. He attracted notice for his special kinship with animals: dogs, cats, and mice that reportedly stopped devastating monastery linens when he promised them regular food. With his growing reputation, he established orphanages and a children’s hospital for the poor, and animal shelters.

Martín’s compassion for all, generosity with his skills, and humility drew the admiration of many. Stories of witnessed miracles—his head surrounded by mysterious light or body in levitation while praying, his body passing through locked doors to help the sick—earned him the reputation as a holy man, even what we now call a “living saint,” who awed Latin America and made Lima proud.

At his death in 1639, all of Lima, from the Viceroy and Archbishop to the poor, came to pay respects at his viewing and took away fragments of his humble habit (3 in total) as relics.

When Martín was identified with posthumous miracles over 25 years, his remains were exhumed from the convent cemetery for translation to a chapel within the convent. His body proved intact upon examination, a key marker of saintliness.

Yet, because of his mixed race, it took almost a century for his beatification in 1837 and another century for his canonization, a telling prelude to the radical Vatican II in 1962 as the first black American saint.

Today, he is venerated throughout the Americas and identified with social justice, the multiracial community, and racial harmony. Many identify him with Papa Candelo in Santería, a syncretistic Afro-Caribbean-Christian religion. 

NEGOTIATING A DAUGHTER’S DUTY IN PURSUIT OF CHRIST

Rosa de Lima, as we know her, was baptized Isabel Flores de Oliva in 1586, reportedly in the same church as Martín. Her married parents were Gaspar de Flores, a well-born Spaniard from Puerto Rico, given a modest reward of income and land for his role in the Peruvian Conquest, and a Peruvian, María de Oliva, a Spaniard with, some say, Inca blood, a mix that, if a highborn Inca, was accepted at all but the highest social levels. The family was large (10 or 11 children) and struggled financially especially after the failure of Gaspar’s mining investments while superintendent of mines at Quives in the mountains. Toribio confirmed Rosa in Quives in 1597 on one of his missions.

He named her Rosa de Santa María for her uncanny bond with the Blessed Virgin and Baby Jesus, through a devotional image at the Dominican Convent of the Holy Rosary where she worshipped and went for guidance.

She’d been intensely religious since childhood, praying in seclusion and attending church to confess and take the Eucharist daily. She committed herself early to perpetual chastity in devotion to Christ, inspired, according to early sources, by the medieval saint Catherine of Siena.

Her parents, however, planned an advantageous marriage for her to alleviate their financial burdens. Rosa was a serious catch by the standards of high Peruvian society. She was compellingly beautiful even as a baby, with winning charm, gifted musically and with the sewing needle, and a virtuous Catholic girl.

Rosa refused all candidates, choosing instead to live at home with her family. There, she combined religious practice in isolation and at church, with contributing financially to the household by selling her exquisite needlework and flowers she grew in the garden. To discourage suitors and all admirers of her beauty—anathema to her intensifying humility and horror of attention and vanity—she chemically damaged her famous face and hands, and cut her hair.

Unable to dissuade her even with bodily punishment, her family finally gave in and allowed her to build a modest hermitage in the garden for isolation, the second of which (5 x 4ft) survives. 

There, she divided her time between her devotions, tending the poor sick with herbs from the garden, or providing sanctuary for the homeless. As she supposedly explained: “When we serve the poor and the sick, we serve Jesus. We must not fail to help our neighbors because in them we serve Jesus.” Recent biographies claim Rosa especially helped the indigenous community and publicly protested against their continuing oppression and the corruption of Spaniards.

Rosa began to draw Lima’s attention with her unprecedented independence, redeemed nonetheless by a combination of admirable traits for the highborn Peruvian woman that she was: proven piety, community service, and family values.

The alternative to marriage was the convent, and several wanted her, given her reputation. Toribio himself reportedly suggested the convent of St. Clara built by his niece. Again Rosa chose an alternative to commit more deeply to Christ. In 1602, like Martín, she became a Dominican tertiary at the Convent of the Holy Rosary, the customary dowry waived. She wore the habit but, unlike Martín, lived at home. Nonetheless she and Martín met and reportedly became friends.

She practiced humility in much the same way as Martín, by undertaking the smallest, most degrading domestic tasks. According to early sources, she went even further by instructing the household maid to abuse her verbally as worthless and despicable.

Which brings us to the facet of her practice whose severity and frequency appalled even her confessors who tried to moderate her zeal. Today it is a much-discussed subject among scholars but difficult to comprehend for most of us.  I don’t remember the nuns of my girlhood telling us much about this.

Again like Catherine of Siena, she not only fasted to emaciation, she practiced bodily mortification to an extreme. She did so in part as penance for sinfulness (she viewed sleep as victory for the devil). Mostly she imitated the crucified Christ to win his love through suffering, a familiar practice in many Roman Catholic cultures. Among her quotes in this vein that are now popular in modern devotional posters is, “We cannot obtain grace unless we suffer afflictions.” Early hagiographers praised her choice and even claimed it was divinely ordained that she be the living image of His Crucified Life. She died grateful for the resulting slow death, for her the more “glorious martyrdom.”

These exercises took place in retreat and she hid the wounds from all but Christ, her intended witness. The signature crown of roses (worn to obey her mother) and veil covered an iron or silver crown of thorns like Christ’s that she drove into her shaved head to maximize pain. The crown of thorns is rarely represented but appears in the effigy commissioned after her canonization for her shrine at the convent where she is buried (see below).

As a reward for her devotion, according to an early hagiographer, Christ appeared to her twice, first as a handsome man (with a bevy of virgins) who declared his love for her, then through the effigy of the Virgin and Christ in Rosa’s usual chapel at the Convent, that came to life so the Christ Child could give her his ring as his spouse. She achieved the mystic marriage she sought.

Her silent tolerance of extreme penitential exercises, the emaciation that, some said, disappeared in prayer, and her reported mystic marriage to Christ launched her reputation as a holy woman in Catholic Lima and beyond. A team of Inquisitors tested her and found her to be pure, blessed with supernatural experience from God. This was a living saint who awed with her union with Christ even as she helped the needy. Reported miracles added another layer of power. A child claimed to witness the Christ Child walking with her in a friend’s garden; Rosa’s defiant protective presence reportedly turned away Dutch pirates intent on pillaging Lima in 1615. Her increasing seclusion only enhanced her aura and fame.

Frequently ill to near death, she finally died at 31 in 1617. Her funeral at the Cathedral was a major civic event. The procession included a telling array of Peruvian society, civil and Church, followed by multitudes of the poor in deep and resonant mourning. With mounting reports of miracles attributed to her, she was moved to a chapel within the convent.

Canonization proceedings began immediately. She was beatified in 1668 and canonized in 1671, the first native-born American saint. With such approval by the Vatican, her cult spread even further throughout the Catholic world.

The honor and her popularity proved her unique importance within that sphere. The extraordinary life of this modern saint, considered equal to those since Early Christian times, suggested divine blessing of the new Eden saved by the Church; of the exemplary piety of modern Catholics there; of the success of the cleansing Counter-Reformation; and of the ongoing vitality of Catholicism.

Toribio, Martín, and Rosa together demonstrate the complementary parts of a church in reform. Toribio, as archbishop, upgraded clerical standards and organizational structures with a close eye on his flock. Martín and Rosa, as two exemplary lay religious, brought extraordinary honor to a monastic community that had been compromised. For help for the poor and oppressed, all provided immediate services: charity. Toribio, however, set about improving conditions in the long term, hoping to alleviate oppression and to optimize access to resources and new opportunities in life: the social justice that Martín embodies today.

In turn, beginning with Toribio’s unconventional support for Martín, the public response to Martín and Rosa demonstrates how a community, monastic and secular, local and global, can transcend social controls and prejudices to respond to and honor individuals from several walks of life, with different life choices. I hope for the same for us.

Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator