New Moon 1/10/36/120

Dear Friends,

It has become of serious concern that the people of Mexico are developing a macabre cult that worships a deity called "Santa Muerte" or "Saint Death."  The idols have a skull and perhaps a skeleton placed  within a bridal dress. The cult following actually worships the idols.  The cult is in fact the product of the Roman Catholic Church's idolatrous practice of adopting pagan idols and giving them and their "days" the names of pseudo-Christian saints. The BBC reporter Vladimir Hernandez produced a comprehensive report last week, 26 November, titled "The Country where exorcisms are on the rise" concerning the cult and the prominence it is achieving among the drug cartels.

Instead of dealing properly with the ancient Aztec practices of human sacrifice, the RC Church superimposed its pagan oriented cult practices over the Aztec and other central American rituals of human sacrifice. They have got what they deserved in this development.

In the constant battle between superstition and the battles between God and Satan as employed by the RC Church, this conflict is made use of by the RC priesthood to explain the total failure of the RC church to deal with the social structure in Mexico.

To the casual observer it may seem extraordinary, but priests say the country is under attack by Satan, and that more exorcists are needed to fight him.

"This attack, they say, is showing itself in the gruesome drug-related violence, including human sacrifice, that has engulfed the country since 2006.

According to the latest official figures available, at least 70,000 people have died in this period, including gunmen, members of the security forces, and many innocent civilians. But, the priests say, it's not just the numbers. The savagery also stands out.

In recent years it has not been uncommon in many parts of Mexico for children to find dismembered bodies on the streets on their way to school. Or for commuters on busy roads to drive past bridges with severely tortured corpses hanging from them. Scenes from hell.

'We believe that behind all these big and structural evils there is a dark agent and his name is The Demon. That is why the Lord wants to have here a ministry of exorcism and liberation, for the fight against the Devil,' says Father Carlos Triana, a priest, and an exorcist."

"As much as we believe that the Devil was behind Adolf Hitler, possessing and directing him, we also believe that he (the Devil) is here behind the drug cartels."

Mexico's exorcists say there is unprecedented demand for their services. Some are even not taking new cases, as they are having to exorcise demons almost every day.

So we see these priests trapped in the morass they have created with their false theology and superstition. Note that these crises developed from 2006 and the carnage there matches the carnage in the Middle East and North Africa in the Arab Spring. Following on from the crises developed from Afghanistan and Iraq before it. These situations have developed over the last generation of the Measuring of the Temple that started in 1987 (see the paper Measuring of the Temple (No. 137)). It will continue on now to the destruction of the false religious systems of the world and the Advent of the Messiah and the Vials of the Wrath of God (see the paper Wars of the Last Days and the Vials of the Wrath of God (No.141B)).

What does the Vatican have to say now about the cult of Santa Muerte or Saint Death?

Vatican view on Saint Death

"'This didn't happen before', says Father Francisco Bautista, another exorcist in Mexico City.
Most of the cases, he explains, require a lesser form of exorcism, called liberation prayers - effective when a person still controls part of his or her mind and body.

Only rarely does the Devil possess someone completely, he says, but when that happens, the bishop of the diocese must intervene.

In Bautista's view, the rising demand for exorcism is partly explained by the large numbers of Mexicans joining the cult of Saint Death, or Santa Muerte.

It is estimated that the cult, whose followers worship a skull in a wedding dress carrying a scythe, has some eight million followers in Mexico - and more among Mexican migrants in Central America, the US and Canada.

"It has also been adopted by the drug traffickers who ask her for help to avoid arrest and to make money," Bautista says. "In exchange they offer human sacrifices. And this has increased the violence in Mexico."

Another reason for the surge in exorcisms, he argues, is the decriminalisation of abortions in Mexico City, in 2007. Both the cult and abortion have given evil spirits a foothold in the country, he insists.

"Both things are closely related. There is an infestation of demons in Mexico because we have opened our doors to Death."

If it is surprising how many Mexicans believe in Saint Death, it may also be surprising how many believe, like Father Triana and Father Bautista, that the Devil and demons are at work in the country. 

The problem is that the Roman Catholics simply adopted the Central American objects of worship and gave them Christian names and established a cult of worship to the Virgin Mother Goddess which has nothing to do with Christianity at all. It is no surprise to the churches of God that the demons are at work in Mexico and in fact all over the world.

Part of the carnage relates to the drug cartels and the inability of the US to control their appetite for drugs and the wars they escalate.

Mexico's war on drugs

The strange situation with the Roman Catholic Church is that they actually held a ceremony in the Vatican and another joint ceremony in North America to enshrine Satan as God in 1963 as recorded by Malachi Martin in Windswept House, Broadway Books New York pp7-20. The ceremony involved child rape and sacrifice as detailed by Martin. There is no doubt that in the view of the RC system they are locked in a life and death struggle with the demons that have now been enshrined in the Vatican and all over the world with Lucifer as their God. They have publicly declared that Lucifer is their God and they are now fighting a phoney war to deal with the consequences. They use the funds of organised crime and the drug cartels to finance their operations to destroy the English speaking world.  The drug trade in the US is not only organised from Mexico so are the criminal gangs operating into Australia and NZ.

Part of the ritual of this mumbo jumbo is Exorcism. The ritual of Exorcism is an ancient practice and one that appears in many different religions, but many believers doubt the existence of demons. That actually makes them more effective.

A frontline of sorts for Mexico's exorcists is the northern region of the country where, for the last seven years, the Mexican military has been waging war against the heavily armed and cash-rich drug cartels.

In parallel with the soldiers, priests have been waging a spiritual conflict. One is Father Ernesto Caro, based in Monterrey, a city blighted by frequent shootouts and kidnappings.

He has reportedly exorcised several members of the drug cartels - and there is one case he cannot forget. It was a gang hitman, who confessed to horrific crimes. Father Caro said the man had been in charge of cutting the bodies into pieces and he said he enjoyed hearing them cry as he did so. Others he burned alive. The priest says the man had committed his life to the service of Saint Death.

"The cult is the first step into Satanism and then into this band of people [the drug traffickers], that's why he was chosen for that job."

"Santa Muerte is being used by all our drug dealers and those linked to these brutal murders. We've found that most of them, if not all, follow Santa Muerte," he adds.

The cult is also followed by criminals, policemen, politicians and artists. Thus Mexico's administration is rotten with it.

"The biggest presence is in the poorest sectors of Mexican society," says journalist Jose Gil Olmos, who has published two books on Saint Death.

The first references to Saint Death occur in the 18th Century, he says, not in Aztec times, as many believe. So the cult is not Aztec even though the human sacrifice was totally identified with Aztec culture and belief. The Roman Catholic Church is thus the grounds within which it grew and the superstition on which it fed and the ignorance that fertilised its growth.

"'In modern times the numbers of followers exploded, especially after the early 1990s economic meltdown.'

Many middle-class Mexicans found themselves in misery. In despair they searched for hope, and some turned to Saint Death, Olmos says."

"From approximately eight years ago we have seen Santa Muerte having a big presence with drug cartel members, from the bosses all the way down. Why? Because these people say that Jesus or the Virgin Mary can't provide what they ask for, which is to be protected from soldiers, police and their enemies."

This quote is highly significant. The failure of the RC system to deal with the false religion of Mariolatry and develop the faith correctly has come under extreme pressure in the last days of the end of the Times of the Gentiles from 1916-1996 (see the papers The Fall of Egypt No. 036) and the Fall of Egypt Part II (No. 036_2)).

Mexico has become a corrupt criminal state fighting for its very existence. God is about to deal with the RC Church and destroy it over the next few short years. It will die with the corrupt administrations in which it thrives.

The writer Olmas says "I went to see what this cult was all about at its biggest annual ceremony in the neighbourhood of Tepito, in Mexico City, a place riddled with drug trafficking and crime.

It's here that one of the biggest sanctuaries of Saint Death in Mexico is located. It's kept tidy by Enriqueta Romero, a woman in her sixties, whose life changed dramatically 12 years ago when she shocked her neighbours by putting a Saint Death figure in her window.

Over the years, more and more people started arriving to pay tribute to the skull figure in a dress. And now thousands gather for the cult's most important ceremony on 31 October, the eve of Mexico's Day of the Dead festival. "It is no surprise that the cult is associated with All Hallows Eve or Halloween.

"She loves us and heals us. People come here to ask her for help - a son in prison or with Aids, or something to eat," says Romero.

During my visit, some people reach the shrine walking on their knees. One of them is a man who carries a 20-day-old baby in his arms. He's come to present his daughter to the skull.

I also see ordinary working-class families, pregnant women asking Death to protect the life of their unborn child, and plenty of people heavily tattooed with the female skull.

Are these people possessed, as the church says?

"No, I also believe in God, in the Virgin, and all the saints, but I am more devout to [Saint] Death. She is the one that helps me the most," says Jose Roberto Jaimes, a man in his 20s who's come on his knees to thank the skull after surviving three years in jail.

I get similar answers from all of the cult followers I talk to the reporter says.

A film of a woman being beheaded in Mexico caused an international outcry in October when Facebook refused to remove it from its site. There have been hundreds of reports about the video - but why has no-one identified the victim in it?

Romero says the church itself bears responsibility for the rise of the cult, having shot itself in the foot with the worldwide child abuse scandal.

"They finished off our faith with the things that the priests did. What can they criticise? That we believe in Death? That is not bad. What's bad is what they did," says Romero.

But does she feel comfortable knowing that people behind horrific crimes also follow this cult?
"We are in a free country and everyone can do what they want. We all will have to answer to God at some point," she says.

It was former President Felipe Calderon who launched the offensive against drug cartels in Mexico in 2006, by deploying troops to the worst-hit areas. Over the years the military has discovered numerous shrines, temples and even churches of Saint Death across the region.

"He [Calderon] started a war against them and he started a war as well against the cult of Saint Death, and he asked the church to help him," says Father Ernesto Caro.

"The Church is not going to go on TV and say: 'Look, we think that Mexico is going to get better and be saved if we do exorcisms because the Devil is behind all of this.' We have to be discreet [with exorcisms] or else we may be ridiculed, even by our own followers," adds Father Carlos Triana.

The exorcisms cannot help reduce the drug-related violence in Mexico - especially the sadistic killings. What we are seeing is the death of the system of the Whore that fostered it. Mexico will get no peace now until the Messiah establishes the Faith of the One True God from Jerusalem.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General