More Faces of Holiness: The Saintly Men of Peru

This post is actually a follow-up to one I did at the beginning of September 2015.  Back then I shared that a team of South American forensic experts were able to reconstruct the probable facial features of St. Rose of Lima (d. 1617) and it was recently unveiled for the world to see (click here to view it).  What I didn't share was the fact that along with the reconstruction of St. Rose's face, the same team of experts also reconstructed the faces of two other Peruvian Saints: St. Martin de Porres and St. Juan Macias.

Holy card depictions (Left to Right):

St. Rose of Lima, St. Martin de Porres,

& St. Juan Macias.

You see... all three of these 17th Century Saints lived and ministered in Lima, Peru, where their memories continue to be revered to this present day.  St. Martin was a personal friend to both his fellow Saints, but St. Rose died about five years before St. Juan entered the Dominican Friary in Lima in 1622.  After each of them passed on to their eternal rewards, their sacred remains all ended up enshrined in the Basilica and Monastery of St. Dominic in Lima.  It was their skulls that the experts used to reconstruct what they probably may have looked like in life.

St. Rose's face was revealed first... and now, the faces of her two male counterparts have also been recently unveiled. Below are the results of the research work completed by the forensic team:

St. Martin de Porres

The Patron Saint of Social Justice, St. Martin was the illegitimate, bi-racial son of a Spanish nobleman and a former black slave from Panama.  In his youth, St. Martin was apprenticed as a barber/medical practitioner, but he abandoned that vocation in favor of joining the Dominicans of Lima, first as a servant, then as a professed lay-brother in 1603. 

A portrait of St. Martin de Porres (Left),

reported to have been painted from life...

and the face that the experts came up with

(Right).  The likeness is striking!

At first, the other friars were condescending towards their mulatto companion, but they came to deeply respect him after Martin won them over with his genuine humility and piety; with his charitable service towards the friars and the sick/poor of Lima; and with his apparent God-given miraculous gifts, which included the astounding abilities of healing, levitation, and bilocation.  St. Martin died in 1639 and was declared a Saint in 1962.

St. Juan Macias

A contemporary of St. Martin, and his spiritual brother in the Dominican Friary, this Saint had a slightly different charism of service in the Church.  While St. Martin ministered primarily to the living citizens of Lima, St. Juan had a special ministry directed towards the deceased, the Holy Souls of Purgatory.  Because of his immense devotion to the Poor Souls, and the extraordinary efforts he made to help release them from their purification, he is often referred to as the "Patron Saint of the Poor Souls".  I won't go into detail about his life in this post, but you can read a little more about him by clicking here.  St. Juan was Canonized by the Catholic Church in 1975.

An old print of St. Juan Macias (Left)... and

the face that the experts came up with (Right).

Again, very close.  The Saint was from Spain

and the European features are evident.

Again, I commend the scientists who worked to reveal these faces of holiness to us.  It's always a joy and a cause for personal excitement for me to see the reconstructed faces of our "pre-photography period" Saints; faces based on solid scientific data and not all dolled-up the way most holy cards represent them.  Now when their names are prayerfully invoked, we can also recall and contemplate their actual faces, bringing us closer to them in the union of prayer.  St. Rose... St. Martin... and St. Juan, pray for us!