Isabel Flores de Oliva ... Santa Rosa de Lima

The saint who fascinated me from my youth.

I wanted to do penance like St. Rose.  But I couldn't.  Saints like Rose and Martin de Porres did horrible penance.  I sometimes wonder if they did so in union with the slaves and indigenous people who suffered so much brutality in colonial times?  St. Martin used to have a servant scourge him bloody in the cellar of the convent bell tower before the friars awakened.  Today the devil mis-characterizes these 'excesses', which in some strange sense of inversion, may excite an erotic fascination with pain.  Sometimes I wonder if it could account for the tendency towards S&M, B&D sex some gay priests and religious seem to be more tempted to when they fall from grace these days?  (I wrote about that once before here.)

But I digress.  Sorry for tainting a post on the lovely Santa Rosa.

Originally it was St. Rose depicted receiving

the rosary from Our Lady.

The Italians designated Catherine of Siena 

for the Pompeii image instead.