Isabel Flores de Oliva or also known as Santa Rosa de Lima was born in Lima on April 30, 1586 . Her parents were the arquebusier Gaspar Flores and María de Oliva. Baptized as Elizabeth , her mother began to call her Rosa since one day, when approaching her crib, she saw her face lit up like a rose . Most of her childhood and adolescence were spent in the town of Quive, an indigenous settlement located in the Sierra de Lima, between the confluence of the Chillón and Arahuay rivers. The Flores de Oliva family moved there, because Gaspar had found a job as a mine manager. As a child, the future Santa Rosa de Lima suffered from an illness that made it impossible for her to move her legs. Her mother wanted to relieve him with a local recipe, covering his legs with vulture skins , measure that she would finally aggravate the ills of her little girl, suffering them in silence. She received the sacrament of confirmation in 1598, along with two other children, from Archbishop Toribio de Mogrovejo , also future saint.
Santa Rosa de Lima moves out of Lima
Once the girl grew up, her parents wanted her to take an interest in the family business and one day her mother took her to the mining mill to see the metal processing. She Saint Rose of Lima did not show any interest and, on the contrary, she warned her mother that gold was the currency that the world offers to lose us . When a landslide occurred in the mine, the Flores de Oliva family had to return to Lima. Rosa was already determined to follow the religious life and she took as a model the life of Saint Catherine of Siena . In 1605 she wanted to enter the monastery of Santa Clara, but due to her poverty she could not raise the necessary dowry for her. She then made a vow to live consecrated to the Lord wearing the habit of a Dominican tertiary and she built with her own hands, in the garden of her house, a cabin in which she spent the day praying or mortifying herself.
The self-penitence of Saint Rose of Lima
She abandoned the foods of daily life, surviving on bread and water that she combined with herbs and juices. She wore hair shirts around her limbs and often flogged herself; The hagiographers tell of her that on one occasion she tried to inflict five thousand blows on herself in a period of eight days, in imitation of the passion of Christ. She wore a crown of thorns so tight that her blood ran down her cheeks. With her abnegation she received patients in her house and attended them .
Santa Rosa de Lima also suffered the temptation of the devil whom she called el mangy; but she enjoyed the presence of God and the apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the Guardian Angel and Saint Catherine of Siena. She attracted the devotion of a circle of pious ladies who tried to follow her example. The last three years of her life were spent at the house of the accountant Gonzalo de la Maza , a high-ranking viceregal official, whose wife admired the virtuous woman from Lima. During her long and painful illness she had miraculous apparitions and premonitions, such as the destruction of Callao as a result of a tidal wave, an event that came to pass in 1746. She died on August 24, 1617, at the age of 31 ; By then she was so revered in the city that her funeral was attended by the viceroy, the archbishop and representatives of all religious orders. Two years later her remains were transferred to a special tomb. Pope Clement X canonized her on April 12, 1671 , setting her feast on August 30. she was the first saint of the New World and an important part of the history of Peru. In the campaign aimed at her prompt sanctification, the interests of the Creole elite and the municipal authorities of Lima, as well as the court of Madrid and the church of Rome, were combined. In all these instances, she agreed to make the miraculous Rose, as Ramón Mujica Pinilla (1995) has written, a symbol of incipient patriotism and the emblem of a new Spanish-American Golden Age .
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