Saint Rose of Lima

Isabel Flores de Oliva was born in Lima on April 20, 1586, the tenth of thirteen children in a family of Spanish origin. The name we know her by was given to her by the Indigenous nurse who looked after her: struck by the baby’s beauty, she followed the custom of her people and called her by the name of a flower, rosa. That name stuck, and the other was forgotten. The family fell on hard times, and she supported everyone: she grew flowers and did embroidery, and sold them at the market in Lima. She never entered a convent: she was a Dominican tertiary, and lived in a hut she had built in the family garden. There she cared for the sick nobody wanted — Indigenous people, African slaves, the city’s poor — bringing them into the house. Historians of Peru consider that room the first social service in the Americas. Her penances were extreme, and it must be said that even her contemporaries found them excessive: she wore a metal crown under her veil and slept on shards of pottery. She was questioned by the Inquisition, which found her of sound mind. She died in Lima on August 24, 1617, at thirty-one. Her funeral brought the city to a standstill. Clement X proclaimed her a saint in 1671: she is the first saint of the Americas. She is patron saint of Peru, of the Philippines and of all Latin America. If your name is Rose, today is your name day.