A Mummy

Years ago I came across a blog that was by a Mexican man who became a traditional Catholic and went to the seminary in La Reja for a while, was never ordained, and now he is no longer a traditional Catholic but he still seems to still have respect for them (I could say us). I used to read his blog and there was one post that I remembered as being a great post.

It was about a popular-devotion among Catholics in South America. Apparently there was a young boy who died and his corpse became mummified somehow. His skin was dry and discolered and he looked like some sort of monkey. For some reason he was never buried, or if he was buried he was exhumed. The laywomen took his body and venerated him as if he were a saint. They put his body in Churches, put beautiful clothes on him like the Infant Jesus of Prague and prayed to him for his intercession. There must have been miracles, for otherwise why would the pious women pray and the devotion grow? This devotion to the mummified young boy became popular among the people, they would march the mummified body with his ornate dress into Churches and have services there.

One day as this devotion was going on in a Catholic Church, the Bishop walked by and was surprised to see a large crowd gathered together in one of his Churches because nobody ever goes to Church anymore in his diocese. He went in and saw the large group of women venerating what looked like an old shriveled up monkey on the altar and he was scandalized. He made it his mission to ban the devotion from his Churches and try to stamp it out. He failed. The lay devotion was more popular than the Bishop and the devotion went on, now underground and persecuted. Soon after, the Bishop died in a car crash and the women saw it a sign of the intercession of the monkey boy as retaliation for trying to have the devotion banned and it served as a warning for the new Bishop to not oppose the cult of the mummified boy. And it went on. I hope it continues to this day. I would love to see this devotion; it is in South America, I do not remember which country. I would rather go to such a Church for such a devotion than go to the Novus Ordo Mass.

So I rediscovered this blog after so many years and started reading it. For a while it was made private and as I was not invited I could no longer read it and forgot about it. It is called Reditus and the blogger says his name is Arturo Vasquez.