St. Rose of Lima

St. Rose of Lima was a Peruvian laywoman, born Isabel Flores de Oliva in Lima on 20 April 1586 and dead in the same city on 24 August 1617, aged thirty-one. She lived as a Dominican tertiary in her parents' garden, supported the household by needlework and by growing flowers, nursed the sick and the poor in a room of the house, and was canonized by Pope Clement X in 1671, the first person born in the Americas to be declared a saint. Her feast is 23 August, kept on 30 August in Peru.

She lived in a colonial capital at a remarkable moment. St. Martin de Porres, St. Juan Macías and the archbishop St. Toribio de Mogrovejo, who confirmed her, were all in Lima during her lifetime, and all four were canonized.

The First Flower of the Americas

St. Rose of Lima was the first person born in the Americas to be canonized. She was baptised Isabel and called Rosa from childhood, a name confirmed when Archbishop Toribio de Mogrovejo confirmed her, and she had no interest in worldly vanity. She was a contemporary of St. Martin de Porres. While Martin served the poor in the streets of Lima, Rose kept a life of prayer and penance in her family's garden and took the sick into her parents' house.

Her family was Spanish and not wealthy. Her father Gaspar Flores had been a soldier in the colonial garrison; her mother María de Oliva ran a crowded household of about a dozen children. An investment in a mining venture failed and left them in debt. Rose supported them for years with embroidery and by selling flowers she grew, which is where her patronage of gardeners and florists comes from.

She refused every proposal of marriage, against her mother's pressure, and around 1606 she was admitted as a tertiary of the Third Order of St. Dominic, wearing the habit and living at home under a rule. Her model was St. Catherine of Siena, another Dominican laywoman who lived in her family's house, and the parallels in her life are deliberate.

Beauty and Penance

Rose feared that her appearance would draw suitors and distract her from the vow she had made, so she took harsh measures to spoil it, including rubbing her face with pepper. She built a small hut in the garden where she prayed and slept, and she wore a silver crown with spikes turned inward under her veil, in imitation of the crown of thorns. She fasted severely, often on bread and water, and slept very little.

These are the details every account of her repeats, and they need reading with care rather than admiration alone. See the section below on how the Church actually treats them.

Mystical Union

Rose passed through long periods of spiritual dryness and desolation, which she described to her confessors as an abandonment lasting years, and also through experiences of union she reported in the language of espousal to Christ. She said that the years of desolation were the hardest thing she carried, harder than any bodily penance.

Her life shows that suffering accepted and joined to Christ has a place in the Christian life. The Catechism teaches that by his passion Christ gave suffering a new meaning, and that it can configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive passion (CCC 1505). It also teaches that God alone gives grace and that no practice of penance earns it as a wage.

Patroness of the New World

She died on 24 August 1617 at thirty-one, in the house of Gonzalo de la Maza, a treasury official whose family had taken her in during her last illness. The city's response was extraordinary: crowds pressed into the funeral, it had to be delayed, and the burial took place with the leading men of Lima carrying the coffin.

Clement IX beatified her in 1667 and Clement X canonized her on 12 April 1671. She was named patroness of Lima, of Peru, of the Indies and of the Philippines. Her canonisation carried a weight beyond her own story, since it established that the new Christian populations of the Americas produced saints of their own within a century of evangelisation.

Quotable Wisdom

"Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven."

This line comes from the passage of her words read in the Liturgy of the Hours on her feast. The prayer often printed under her name asking the Lord to increase her sufferings and her love comes from the same devotional tradition, recorded by those who knew her rather than written down by her own hand.

The Life in Colonial Lima

Lima in Rose's lifetime was the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, a wealthy port city of Spaniards, criollos, indigenous Peruvians and Africans, with the silver of Potosí passing through it and with the extremes of colonial society on open display. Rose grew up in that city and never left it.

Her formation was Dominican. The friars of the Rosary convent were her confessors, she read what they gave her, and the Third Order gave a laywoman a recognised place with a rule, a habit and a discipline. She never entered a convent, and the standard account is that she chose to stay at home so that she could support her parents. Her sanctity was worked out in a crowded family house with money troubles.

She died young of an illness that had troubled her for months. Contemporaries recorded a long and painful final sickness, borne without complaint, and her last recorded words were an invocation of the name of Jesus.

How to Read Her Penances

Modern readers find the pepper and the spiked crown alarming, and the honest answer is that the Church does not propose them for imitation. Three points hold that together.

The first is context. Extreme bodily penance was a recognised form of devotion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, practised across Catholic Europe and its colonies, and Rose was doing something her culture understood, in the pattern of Catherine of Siena, whose life she had read.

The second is that she was examined. Her confessors were uneasy about her, and a commission of theologians and physicians was appointed in Lima to test whether her experiences and her way of life came from grace, from illness or from delusion. The examination concluded in her favour. That process is part of the record, and it shows the Church treating extraordinary claims with suspicion before accepting them.

The third is what the Church actually teaches about penance. Fasting, almsgiving and prayer are the forms it commends, penance is to be governed by prudence and obedience to a director, and life and health are gifts held in stewardship rather than possessions to be squandered. What is canonised in Rose is her charity, her perseverance in prayer through years of desolation and her care for the sick, and no one is asked to copy her austerities.

The Room at the Back of the House

The part of her life that is least told is the most imitable. Rose set aside a room in her parents' house and brought in sick and destitute people from the streets of Lima: indigenous Peruvians, enslaved and free Africans, and poor Spaniards, treated the same. She nursed them, fed them and paid for what they needed out of her sewing and her flowers. In a city organised by caste, taking those patients into a family house was a statement about who counts.

Peruvian tradition counts that room as one of the beginnings of organised social service in the country, and her name is attached to hospitals and clinics across Latin America. It is also the piece of her life that fits the judgment in Matthew 25:40, that what is done for the least of Christ's brethren is done for him.

What the Record Rests On

Rose died in 1617 and her canonisation process began soon after, which means testimony was taken in Lima from people who had known her: her mother, her confessors, the de la Maza household, neighbours and patients. That material, together with the seventeenth-century life written by the Dominican Leonhard Hansen, is the basis of everything told about her.

Two cautions follow. The witnesses were devoted to her and were answering questions designed to establish sanctity, so the accounts run in one direction. And some vivid episodes belong to tradition rather than to the documented record. The best known is the story of the Dutch raid on Callao in 1615, in which Rose is said to have stood before the tabernacle in the Dominican church ready to defend it if the attackers reached the city. They never did reach Lima, and the story is told as devotional memory.

Feast Day, Patronage and Devotion

Her feast is 23 August in the general Roman calendar, an optional memorial. Peru and much of Latin America keep it on 30 August as a solemnity and a public holiday, and in Lima the day draws enormous crowds to the sanctuary built around the site of her family home.

She is patroness of Lima, of Peru, of the Americas and of the Philippines, and she is invoked by gardeners, florists and embroiderers, from the work she did for a living. At the sanctuary of Santa Rosa in Lima visitors write petitions and drop them into the well in the garden, a custom that grew up around the site.

Her relics are in the church of Santo Domingo in Lima, together with those of St. Martin de Porres and St. Juan Macías. The usual devotion attached to her is simple: the rosary, the Dominican habit of daily mental prayer, and works of mercy done in one's own house.

What to Take From Rose of Lima

Sanctity fits inside a crowded house. She never entered a convent, supported her parents financially, and lived her rule in the family garden.

Bring the work home. The sick room at the back of her parents' house is the most copyable thing she did, and it cost her sewing money rather than a founder's endowment.

Keep going without consolation. Her long desolation is the part of her story most useful to an ordinary Christian, and she treated it as harder than any physical penance.

Take penance under direction. Rose was examined by theologians and physicians. Fasting and self-denial belong under the guidance of a confessor, and the Church's own counsel is prudence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was St. Rose of Lima?

St. Rose of Lima was a Peruvian laywoman and Dominican tertiary who lived from 1586 to 1617. She supported her family by needlework and by growing flowers, lived a life of prayer and severe penance in her parents' garden, nursed the sick and poor in a room of the house, and became the first person born in the Americas to be canonized, in 1671.

Why did St. Rose of Lima do penance on her own beauty?

She had vowed herself to Christ and refused marriage, and she feared that her appearance would attract suitors and pressure from her family. She rubbed pepper on her face, cut off her hair and wore a spiked silver crown under her veil. The Church holds up her charity and her perseverance in prayer rather than these austerities, and does not propose them for imitation.

Was St. Rose of Lima a nun?

No. She was a lay member of the Third Order of St. Dominic, which meant she wore the habit and followed a rule while living in her family's home. The usual account is that she stayed at home in order to support her parents, who were in debt.

What is St. Rose of Lima the patron saint of?

She is patroness of Lima, of Peru, of the Americas and of the Philippines, and she is invoked by gardeners, florists and embroiderers, from the work she did to support her family.

When is the feast of St. Rose of Lima?

Her feast is 23 August in the general Roman calendar. Peru and much of Latin America keep it on 30 August, where it is a major celebration and a public holiday.

Who were St. Rose of Lima's contemporaries in Lima?

St. Martin de Porres and St. Juan Macías, both Dominicans, and St. Toribio de Mogrovejo, the archbishop who confirmed her, all lived in Lima during her lifetime. All four were canonized, and the relics of Rose, Martin and Juan Macías are in the church of Santo Domingo in Lima.