Saint Rose of Lima

Saint Rose of Lima was a lay Dominican tertiary from Peru. In her parents’ home she led a life of prayer and penance, worked hard to support her family, and cared for the poor and the sick. She is the first canonized saint of the New World. The Church commemorates her on August 23, the eve of the day of her death.

She was born in Lima on April 20, 1586, one of the thirteen children of Gaspar de Flores and María de Oliva, a family of Spanish origin. At baptism she received the name Isabel, but at home she was called Rose, and the Archbishop of Lima, Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo, confirmed this name when he gave her the sacrament of confirmation. Later she added to it the name “of Saint Mary.” Already as a child she chose Saint Catherine of Siena as her model and resolved to belong to God alone.

When her father’s business failed, the family fell into poverty. Rose helped to support them by working in the garden and by embroidery, at which she sat late into the night. Her parents wanted her to marry, but for years she held to her resolution. She thought of entering a convent, yet she remained a virgin living in the world: at about the age of twenty she received the habit of the Third Order of Saint Dominic. In a corner of the garden she made herself a tiny cell, where she prayed and worked, leaving it mainly to go to church.

She fasted, abstained from meat, and took up severe mortifications of the kind known to the spirituality of her age. The Roman Martyrology says that she offered them for the conversion of sinners and of the Indians, for whom she longed to give her life. She prayed that God would increase her sufferings, provided that with them he increased her love. While she was still alive, a commission of clergy and scholars examined her mystical experiences and recognized them as a gift of grace.

In her mother’s house she set up a shelter for those in need. She took in poor and sick women, abandoned children, and old people, most of them Indians, and nursed them herself. When her mother complained of the unpleasant smell of her clothes after she had cared for a sick woman, she answered that in serving the sick we are the aroma of Christ. Pope Francis, praying in 2018 in the cathedral of Lima before the relics of the saints of Peru, recalled her prayer, penance, and charity.

She spent her last years in the house of Gonzalo de la Maza, a treasury official, and his wife. There, after a grave illness, she died on August 24, 1617, the feast of the Apostle Bartholomew, at the age of 31, calling on the name of Jesus. The bull of canonization records that she was mourned above all by the beggars of Lima, to whom she had been a mother, and that crowds came to her funeral. She was buried in the church of the Dominicans.

Pope Clement IX beatified her in 1668. Clement X proclaimed her principal patroness of America in 1670 and canonized her on April 12, 1671. She is also the patroness of Peru and of the Philippines. The bull of canonization set her memorial on August 30; in the present General Calendar it falls on August 23.