School History     Staff     Mission Statement     School Philosophy

 

 

 Who Is Santa Rosa De Lima?

 

Isabel de Santa Maria Flores was born in Lima Peru, of Spanish parents and took the name Rosa at conformation. Noted for her beauty, she resisted her parent’s effort to have her marry and practiced great austerities, taking St. Catherine of Siena as her model from her childhood days. She became a Dominican tertiary, living as a recluse in a shack in a garden. She worked to help her parents, who had fallen on difficult times, and experienced mystical gifts and visions of such an extraordinary nature that a commission of priest and doctors was appointed to examine her. They decided her visions were of supernatural origin. Stories of her holiness spread and her garden became the spiritual center of the city; when an earthquake struck nearby, her prayers were credited with sparing Lima. In ill health, she accepted the offer of Don Gonzalo de Massa and his wife to take care of her, and she spent the last three years of her life in their home in Lima, and she died there on August 24, 1586. She was canonized in 1671 by Pope Clement X, the first saint of the New World. She is patroness of South America.