Feast day: 23 August
Saint Rose of Lima
Sancta Rosa Limensis
Isabel Flores de Oliva, called Rose, lived a hidden life of prayer, penance and care of the sick poor in a garden hut in colonial Lima, and became the first canonized saint of the New World.
- Born
- 20 April 1586, Lima (Viceroyalty of Peru)
- Died
- 24 August 1617, Lima (Peru)
- Canonization
- Beatified 15 April 1667 by Clement IX; canonized 12 April 1671 by Clement X, the first canonized saint born in the Americas; declared patroness of the Americas and the Philippines in 1670.
- Religious order
- Third Order of Saint Dominic
- Country
- Peru
Biography
A Creole girl of Lima
Born to Gaspar Flores, a Puerto Rican-born harquebusier of the viceregal guard, and Maria de Oliva, a Creole of Lima, she was baptised Isabel but called Rosa. The family was of modest means and she supported it by embroidery and by selling flowers she grew herself. From childhood she was drawn to prayer and fasting, and she resisted her parents' plans for her marriage for years.
Penance and prayer
Inspired by Saint Catherine of Siena, she took the habit of the Dominican Third Order in 1606 and lived in a small hut in the garden, keeping severe fasts and wearing a silver crown set with points beneath her veil. Her confessors and a commission of theologians and physicians examined her austerities and her mystical experiences; her spiritual director restrained several of her penances. She spoke of long periods of interior desolation as well as of consoling union with Christ.
Servant of the poor and death
She took into her home sick indigenous people, enslaved Africans and destitute elderly, an initiative later seen as the beginning of social service in Peru. She died at thirty-one after a long illness borne with serenity, on 24 August 1617. Her funeral in Lima drew such crowds that it had to be delayed; the city treated her at once as its patroness.
Timeline
- 1586 — Born in Lima on 20 April
- 1597 — Confirmed by Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo, who gives her the name Rose
- 1606 — Receives the habit of the Dominican Third Order
- c. 1614 — Opens her home to the sick poor of Lima
- 1617 — Dies in Lima on 24 August
- 1671 — Canonized by Clement X, first saint of the Americas
Dates marked ~ are traditional or debated among historians.
Symbols
Crown of roses with thorns — Her name and the hidden penance she wore beneath it.
Anchor — Emblem of hope, and of the city of Lima that claims her.
Infant Jesus in her arms — Her reported mystical vision of the Child.
Virtues & spiritual lessons
Heroic penance always submitted to obedience, patience under mockery and family opposition, and practical charity to the most despised of colonial society.
Importance in the Church
Her canonization affirmed that sanctity had taken root in the New World, and she remains patroness of Latin America, the Philippines and the Indies, invoked by indigenous, Creole and mestizo Catholics alike.
Miracles
The canonization process examined healings attributed to her intercession in Lima and Spain; popular tradition also credits her prayer with the city's deliverance from a Dutch attack in 1615, a devotional claim rather than a verified miracle.
Quotes
“Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.”
Words recorded in the canonization process; quoted in the Liturgy of the Hours, 23 August
“Let all know that grace comes after tribulation.”
Testimony of her words, Office of Readings, 23 August
Prayers
Collect of Saint Rose of Lima
O God, who set Saint Rose of Lima on fire with love for you, and willed that she should leave the world to devote herself to a life of penance, grant, through her intercession, that we may follow the path of life on earth and drink from the streams of your delights in heaven. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Collect of 23 August, Roman Missal.
Places
Santuario de Santa Rosa de Lima, Peru — Her family home and the garden hut, with the well of petitions.
Basilica and Convent of Santo Domingo, Lima — Where her relics rest with those of Martin de Porres and John Macías.
Entries are drawn from the Roman Martyrology, the General Roman Calendar, canonization records of the Holy See, and the saints' own writings. Where a date, quotation or attribution is uncertain, it is marked as such. (63 saints)