The Rosary in the Hands of Killers: Why Cartel Members Wear Crucifixes While They Murder by Jeff Callaway

The Rosary in the Hands of Killers: Why Cartel Members Wear Crucifixes While They Murder

By Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

A Border of Blood and Prayer

The photograph tells a story that ought to stop your heart cold. A mass grave in Sinaloa, bodies stacked like cordwood, victims of cartel violence left to rot in the Mexican dirt. But look closer at the images of the killers themselves, the sicarios who create these valleys of death. Around their necks hang rosaries. On their chests, crucifixes catch the desert sun. In their pockets, prayer cards to Our Lady of Guadalupe rest alongside ammunition and methamphetamine.

This is the horror show at America's southern border that nobody in Washington wants to acknowledge, a spiritual cancer that goes deeper than politics, deeper than drug policy, deeper than border security. This is a battle for souls being waged in blood, and the weapon of choice is a twisted perversion of the Catholic faith that would make the Cristero martyrs weep.

How did we get here? How did the rosary end up in the hands of killers? How did the same crucifix that inspired saints to die shouting "Viva Cristo Rey" become a lucky charm for narcotraffickers who decapitate their enemies and leave the heads as warnings? The answer reveals a spiritual catastrophe unfolding right under our noses, where folk religion has merged with death worship, where cultural Christianity has replaced genuine conversion, and where the difference between life and death has been lost in a fog of syncretism and superstition.

When Faith Became Culture: The Roots of Mexican Catholicism

To understand this darkness, we must first understand the light. In 1531, on the hill of Tepeyac near what is now Mexico City, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to an indigenous peasant named Juan Diego. She spoke to him in his native Nahuatl language, identified herself as the Mother of the true God, and asked that a church be built in her honor.

When Juan Diego brought her message to the Spanish bishop, he was dismissed. But Our Lady appeared again, instructing Juan Diego to gather roses blooming miraculously in winter on the barren hilltop. When he opened his tilma before the bishop, the roses fell to the floor and revealed something that would change Mexican history forever: an image of the Virgin Mary imprinted on the fabric itself, an image that remains intact nearly five hundred years later despite being woven from agave fibers that should have disintegrated within decades.

The apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe became the catalyst for the conversion of Mexico. Within seven years, eight million indigenous people converted to Catholicism. The image itself spoke in symbols the native people could understand: the black maternity sash showing she carried a child, her loose hair signifying virginity, her standing on the crescent moon and before the sun declaring that the child in her womb was more powerful than the Aztec deities. She was not a goddess herself but one who prayed to God, pointing always to her Son, Jesus Christ.

Guadalupe became more than a devotion. She became the soul of Mexico itself, a fusion of indigenous conscience and Christian truth. When Miguel Hidalgo launched Mexico's fight for independence from Spain in 1810, his soldiers carried banners bearing her image. When Emiliano Zapata's peasant rebels entered Mexico City in 1914, they too marched under her standard. Our Lady of Guadalupe was not just a religious symbol but the very identity of Mexican nationhood.

But this deep intertwining of faith and culture carried within it the seeds of a dangerous confusion. When Catholicism becomes so bound up with national identity that it is absorbed into the cultural fabric rather than remaining a living faith demanding conversion, the symbols can be stripped of their meaning. The crucifix can become decoration. The rosary can become jewelry. And the difference between authentic devotion and empty superstition begins to blur.

Martyrs and Witnesses: The Backbone of Mexican Catholic Identity

The true character of Mexican Catholicism was tested by fire in the 1920s, during a period of persecution so brutal that historians call it one of the most violent anticlerical campaigns in history. The Cristero War, fought between 1926 and 1929, pitted faithful Catholics against a government determined to eradicate the Church from Mexican life.

President Plutarco Elías Calles, a fanatical atheist, enacted laws designed to crush Catholicism. Churches were shuttered. Foreign priests were expelled. The celebration of Mass became a crime. Wearing clerical garb in public could get you shot. In response to these draconian measures, the Mexican bishops suspended all public worship rather than submit to government control.

But the faithful refused to surrender. Taking the battle cry "Viva Cristo Rey"—Long Live Christ the King—thousands of Mexicans, many of them poor peasants armed with machetes and rifles, rose in rebellion. They were called Cristeros, and they knew they were fighting for the most basic human right: the freedom to worship the one true God.

The government's response was savage. Priests were hunted down and executed. Father Toribio Romo González was shot in his bed. Father Miguel Pro, a Jesuit who had evaded capture for sixteen months, was arrested and executed by firing squad, refusing a blindfold and spreading his arms in the form of a cross as the bullets tore into him. Anacleto González Flores, a Catholic lawyer who advocated peaceful resistance, was tortured for hours before being executed, his body left as a warning to others.

These were not isolated incidents. During three years of war, ninety thousand people died. Priests celebrated Mass in secret, knowing that soldiers could burst in at any moment with machine guns. Many were martyred while consecrating the Eucharist or hearing confessions. Women smuggled weapons and intelligence, risking their lives for the faith. Young boys like José Sánchez del Río, only fourteen years old, were tortured and killed for refusing to renounce Christ.

The Cristero martyrs understood something essential: faith is not cultural padding or national heritage. It is a commitment that demands everything, even unto death. Twenty-five of these martyrs, including six Knights of Columbus priests, have been canonized as saints by the Catholic Church. Their witness stands as the true backbone of Mexican Catholic identity, a testament written in blood that authentic faith means total surrender to Jesus Christ, not comfortable religious customs.

But after the war ended in uneasy compromise, something began to shift in Mexican religious life. The faith that had inspired such heroic sacrifice gradually settled into something less demanding, less costly. For many, Catholicism became what it had always threatened to become: a cultural inheritance rather than a living encounter with the risen Lord.

The Emergence of Folk Religion and the First Commandment

The Catholic Church has always been clear about the relationship between God and His people. The First Commandment is unambiguous: "I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that this commandment forbids honoring any gods other than the one true God who has revealed Himself. It condemns superstition, which the Catechism defines as attributing magical power to certain practices apart from the interior dispositions they require. To believe that wearing a rosary will protect you from bullets simply because you wear it, regardless of the state of your soul, is superstition. To petition saints or holy figures for favors while living in mortal sin and having no intention of repentance is to fall into idolatry.

The Catechism states clearly: "Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money."

This teaching stands in stark contrast to what emerged in certain corners of Mexican religious practice. As official catechesis weakened and pastoral care faltered in remote areas, folk Catholicism—a blending of indigenous beliefs and Catholic forms—grew unchecked. Devotions arose that had the appearance of Catholicism but lacked the essential connection to Christ that authentic Catholic practice demands.

The Catholic Church has always distinguished between genuine inculturation—where local customs are baptized and elevated to point toward Christ—and syncretism, where pagan practices are simply dressed up in Christian language. Inculturation enriches the faith. Syncretism corrupts it.

In parts of Mexico, this corruption took root. Old indigenous practices of petitioning spirits and deities for favors merged with Catholic prayers and rituals. The result was a religious hodgepodge where people lit candles before skeletons representing death, prayed rosaries to folk saints never recognized by the Church, and sought supernatural protection through magical thinking rather than through genuine conversion and the sacramental life of the Church.

Santa Muerte: When Death Becomes Divine

The most visible manifestation of this spiritual corruption is the cult of Santa Muerte—Holy Death or Saint Death. Despite the name, Santa Muerte is no saint at all. The Catholic Church has never recognized her, and multiple bishops and Vatican officials have condemned devotion to her in the strongest possible terms.

Santa Muerte is typically depicted as a female skeletal figure dressed in flowing robes, often holding a scythe and a globe. Her devotees, numbering in the millions across Mexico and the United States, pray to her for protection, prosperity, love, and vengeance. They light candles before her shrines, offer her tequila and cigarettes, and petition her for favors both mundane and criminal.

The origins of Santa Muerte are murky, blending indigenous Mexican death symbolism with Catholic ritual forms and possibly occult influences. What is clear is that she represents a fundamental inversion of Christian truth. Christianity proclaims that Christ has conquered death through His resurrection. Death is the last enemy, defeated at Calvary and the empty tomb. Christians do not beg death for favors; we celebrate Christ's victory over death.

But Santa Muerte's followers see death itself as a power to be petitioned, a force to be appeased, even a friend to be courted. This is not a Catholic devotion by any stretch of the imagination, no matter how many rosaries are prayed before her shrines or how many Catholic symbols adorn her altars.

Bishop Michael Sis of San Angelo, Texas, issued a clear statement in 2013 condemning the cult: "Involvement with Santa Muerte is spiritually dangerous and it is not Catholic in any way. It should be completely avoided. It is a perversion of devotion to the saints." He explained that authentic saints are those recognized through the official process of beatification and canonization, not folk figures conjured from cultural imagination and death worship.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, called devotion to Santa Muerte "sinister and infernal," declaring it "a blasphemy against religion" and "the celebration of devastation and of hell." He emphasized that everyone—families, churches, and society as a whole—must work to stop this phenomenon.

Mexican Archbishop Cardinal Norberto Rivera was equally blunt: "Santa Muerte is an absurdity. Every Christian should be in favor of life, not death." And Father Eduardo Gutierrez stated plainly what many Catholics had been thinking: "Santa Muerte is literally a demon with another name. That's what it is."

Yet despite these condemnations, the cult has exploded in popularity. Estimates suggest between ten and twelve million devotees, mostly in Mexico but with significant numbers in the United States and Central America. Her shrines dot the landscape from Tepito in Mexico City to barrios in Los Angeles. Her image appears on candles, statues, prayer cards, and tattoos. And most disturbingly, she has become intimately associated with narcotrafficking and organized crime.

Narco-Saints and Cartel Pseudo-Religion

Santa Muerte is not the only unsanctioned spiritual figure venerated in cartel culture. Jesús Malverde, a legendary bandit from Sinaloa who may or may not have actually existed, has been adopted as the patron saint of drug traffickers. His shrine in Culiacán draws a steady stream of narcos seeking protection from law enforcement and safe passage for their drug shipments.

The story goes that Malverde was a Robin Hood figure who stole from the rich and gave to the poor before being executed by the government around 1909. Whether the man ever lived is debatable; historians believe the legend combines elements from the lives of multiple bandits. But the cult is real enough. Devotees petition Malverde for miracles, leave offerings of money and gifts at his shrine, and credit him with saving them from arrest and death.

Malverde's elevation to narco-sainthood can be traced partly to Sinaloa's central role in drug trafficking and partly to specific incidents where traffickers claimed he answered their prayers. One story tells of Raymundo Escalante, shot by assassins hired by his own father, praying to Malverde and miraculously surviving. After that, drug lords like El Chapo Guzmán and Rafael Caro Quintero were reported to have sought Malverde's intercession.

But the most disturbing pseudo-religious movement in cartel culture emerged with La Familia Michoacana, a cartel that combined Catholic and evangelical imagery with occult practices to create what amounts to a militarized death cult.

La Familia's leader, Nazario Moreno González, known as "El Más Loco" (The Craziest One), created his own "bible" filled with his sayings and required cartel members to carry it, memorize it, and live by it. He preached that the cartel was doing God's work by eliminating enemies and protecting the poor. Members were required to attend prayer sessions, abstain from using the drugs they trafficked, and participate in rituals that included wearing crucifixes and praying rosaries—all while engaging in kidnapping, torture, and murder.

In 2006, La Familia announced its presence by throwing five severed heads onto a nightclub dance floor along with a message: "The Family doesn't kill for money. It doesn't kill women. It doesn't kill innocent people, only those who deserve to die. Know that this is divine justice."

This grotesque fusion of Christian language and savage violence represents the ultimate corruption of Catholic symbols. The cartel used the Cross of the Knights Templar in its insignia, mimicking the medieval Catholic order. Members wore ceremonial garb modeled after crusaders. And all the while, they carved cryptic initials into their victims' foreheads, engaged in ritualized torture, and built an empire on methamphetamine production and murder.

When La Familia splintered, some members formed the Knights Templar cartel, continuing the pseudo-religious theme. They claimed to be protecting Michoacán from rival cartels and corrupt government, positioning themselves as righteous defenders of the people even as they extorted businesses, kidnapped civilians, and controlled the drug trade through terror.

Nazario Moreno himself became a folk saint after his reported death in 2010 (though many Michoacanos believed he faked his death and lived on). Shrines to "San Nazario" appeared, complete with candles and offerings, transforming a drug lord into an object of veneration.

The Catechism's Answer: True Sacramentals vs. Superstitious Talismans

The Catholic Church has always taught that sacramentals—holy objects like rosaries, crucifixes, medals, and blessed water—are powerful aids to faith when used properly. But their power does not come from the objects themselves. They are not magical charms.

The Catechism explains that sacramentals "prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it." They point us toward Christ and the sacraments. But to attribute efficacy to these objects apart from interior conversion and genuine faith is to fall into the very superstition condemned by the First Commandment.

A rosary worn around the neck of a cartel hitman as he tortures a rival is not a sacramental bringing grace. It is a perversion, a mockery of authentic devotion. The crucifix hanging over a meth lab is not sanctifying that space. It is a hollow symbol stripped of its meaning, reduced to a good luck charm.

The difference between Our Lady of Guadalupe and Santa Muerte illustrates this perfectly. Guadalupe's message always points to Christ. She identifies herself as the Mother of the true God. She asks for a church to be built not to glorify herself but so she can show the mercy and love of God to all people. Her image draws people to repentance, conversion, and sacramental life. She leads souls to Jesus.

Santa Muerte, by contrast, points only to herself. She offers favors without demanding conversion. She promises protection without requiring repentance. She welcomes those whom the Church supposedly rejects—drug traffickers, criminals, those living in mortal sin—not to call them to holiness but to assure them they can continue in their wickedness while still receiving supernatural help.

This is not mercy. This is demonic deception dressed up in Catholic forms.

The Church teaches that genuine devotion to Mary and the saints always leads to Christ. True saints lived lives of heroic virtue. They died in friendship with God. Their intercession is powerful precisely because they now dwell in heaven, united perfectly with the will of the Father. To ask their prayers is simply to ask holy members of the Body of Christ to pray for us, just as we might ask a living Christian friend to pray for our intentions.

But Santa Muerte never lived. She is not a person who achieved holiness and now intercedes before God's throne. She is a personification of death itself, the very enemy Christ came to defeat. To petition her is to reject the Gospel and embrace the lie that death can be bargained with, that the grave has power we must appease.

Rosaries on Killers: What the Symbols Reveal

When we see cartel sicarios wearing rosaries and crucifixes, what are we witnessing? Not faith, but superstition. Not devotion, but magical thinking. Not Christianity, but a cargo cult version of Catholicism where the symbols have been retained but the substance has been gutted.

Many of these men come from nominally Catholic backgrounds. They were baptized as infants. They may have attended catechism classes sporadically. They know the rituals and the prayers in the same way someone might know the lyrics to a song without understanding the words. Their Catholicism is cultural, inherited, superficial.

When they enter the narco world, they do not abandon these religious forms. Instead, they warp them to serve their purposes. The rosary becomes a talisman to protect them from bullets. The crucifix becomes a lucky charm to ensure successful drug runs. Prayer cards to Guadalupe get tucked next to photos of Santa Muerte and Jesús Malverde, creating a spiritual smorgasbord where everything is jumbled together without distinction.

This is not authentic Catholic practice. The Church teaches that sacramentals must be accompanied by interior conversion. You cannot live in mortal sin, involved in kidnapping and murder, dealing death in crystal meth and cocaine, and expect a rosary to save you. That is not how grace works. That is not what the faith teaches.

But for men whose formation in the faith was shallow to begin with, who never had genuine catechesis or pastoral care, who absorbed Catholicism as culture rather than as truth demanding response, this confusion makes a terrible kind of sense. If religion is just about symbols and rituals and ethnic identity, why not mix and match? Why not add Santa Muerte to the mix alongside Guadalupe? Why not pray for protection while planning murder?

The psychological dimension cannot be ignored either. These men live with the constant threat of violent death. They have seen their friends executed, their rivals beheaded, their own families threatened. In such an environment, the human heart desperately seeks any protection, any hope of control over chaos. If wearing a rosary might give you an edge, even a superstitious edge, why not do it?

But this is precisely what the Church condemns as tempting God—trying to manipulate divine power for our own purposes, seeking supernatural aid while refusing to submit to God's moral law. It reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what Christianity is. Faith is not a transaction where we bribe heaven with prayers and rituals. Faith is a relationship of love and obedience with the God who created us, redeemed us, and calls us to holiness.

The Border as Spiritual Battleground

What we see in cartel culture is not merely criminal violence. It is spiritual warfare made visible. When death is worshipped, when Christ's symbols are perverted to bless murder, when rosaries hang around the necks of killers, we are witnessing the victory of the demonic in human affairs.

The violence at America's southern border has a body count that staggers the imagination. Since 2006, when the Mexican government declared war on the cartels, more than four hundred sixty thousand people have been killed. That is not a typo. Nearly half a million deaths in less than twenty years. Entire cities have been turned into war zones. Mass graves hold dozens, sometimes hundreds, of bodies. Journalists are assassinated. Politicians are corrupted or killed. Ordinary citizens live in terror.

And behind it all is an economy built on feeding America's appetite for illegal drugs. The cartels traffic cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and increasingly fentanyl—a drug so deadly that two milligrams can kill an adult. These substances flow north across the border, destroying American communities, killing tens of thousands each year, while billions of dollars flow south to fund the carnage.

This is not a problem that can be solved by border security alone, or law enforcement alone, or economic development alone. It is a spiritual crisis. Where the Gospel is not proclaimed, where authentic catechesis does not form consciences, where pastoral care is absent, the void is filled by something else. And in Mexico, that void has been filled by folk religion, death worship, and narco-spirituality.

Catholic leaders in Mexico have tried to respond. They pray for victims. They call for peace. They condemn the violence. But they are operating in a culture where the institutional Church has lost significant ground. Priests in Mexico face extortion and death threats. Some have been killed by cartels. Many parishes lack the resources or the courage to provide serious formation in the faith.

Meanwhile, Protestant evangelical and Pentecostal churches have made significant inroads, offering clear moral teaching and strong community even as the Catholic Church struggles. This is not merely a problem of religious competition. It is a referendum on whether Mexican Catholicism can recover its prophetic voice, whether it can call people away from syncretism and superstition and back to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Mexican bishops condemned the use of Santa Muerte in political advertising by the ruling party, calling it a distortion of the nation's fundamental values and a glorification of violence. But this kind of high-level denunciation, while necessary, is not enough. What is needed is a grass-roots renewal of catechesis, a re-evangelization of baptized Catholics who have never truly encountered Christ, a clear proclamation that you cannot serve both God and mammon—or God and death.

Death Conquered by Life: The Christian Answer

The Christian faith is not complicated on this point. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on human flesh, lived a perfect life, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead. By His death and resurrection, He conquered sin and death. Death is not our friend. Death is the enemy. And Christ has defeated it.

This is why Christians do not beg death for favors. We do not light candles before skeletal figures and ask them to protect us in our sinful pursuits. We do not need to appease the grave because the grave is empty. Christ has triumphed.

The Resurrection is the foundation of Christian hope. It means that death does not have the final word. It means that no matter how dark the night, no matter how violent the cartel wars, no matter how many bodies fill the mass graves, God will have the victory. Evil will not win. The blood of the martyrs, from the Cristeros to the innocent victims of cartel violence, cries out for justice, and God will answer.

But this victory is not automatic. It requires conversion. It demands that we turn away from sin and turn toward Christ. It means rejecting the false gods—whether money, power, pleasure, or death itself—and worshipping the one true God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Authentic Catholic devotion to Mary and the saints always points us to this truth. When we pray the rosary properly, we are not engaging in magic. We are meditating on the mysteries of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. We are asking Mary, the Mother of God, to intercede for us with her Son. We are aligning ourselves with the communion of saints, the great cloud of witnesses who have run the race before us and now cheer us on from heaven.

The rosary in the hands of a saint is a weapon of spiritual warfare, a means of grace, a meditation on the saving work of Christ. The rosary in the hands of a killer, worn as a lucky charm while planning murder, is a mockery and a blasphemy. The symbol remains the same. The meaning is utterly different.

The Hollow Rosary: A Call to True Conversion

What, then, is the answer to this spiritual catastrophe? How do we respond to the image of rosaries around the necks of cartel hitmen, crucifixes hanging in meth labs, shrines to Our Lady of Guadalupe standing next to altars to Santa Muerte?

First, we must tell the truth. We must call out the lie that these practices have anything to do with authentic Christianity. Syncretism is not acceptable. Folk religion that divorces Catholic symbols from Catholic truth is not legitimate inculturation. It is spiritual poison. The bishops have been right to condemn Santa Muerte, and they must continue to do so clearly and forcefully.

Second, we must catechize. The crisis in cartel spirituality is ultimately a crisis of catechesis. Too many baptized Catholics have never been taught the faith. They know the symbols but not the substance. They can recite prayers without understanding what they mean. They think Catholicism is about lighting candles and wearing medals rather than dying to self and taking up the cross daily.

This requires a massive investment in religious education at all levels. Parishes need to teach the Catechism, not just children but adults. They need to explain what the sacraments are and why they matter. They need to clarify the difference between authentic devotion and superstition. They need to proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord and that every other allegiance—including allegiance to cartels, to narco-saints, and to death itself—must be renounced.

Third, we must evangelize. The Gospel must be preached with clarity and power. This is not a time for watered-down Christianity, for therapeutic God-talk, for vague spirituality. This is a time to proclaim that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him. It is time to call sinners to repentance, to offer them the mercy of the cross, and to demand that they choose between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness.

Fourth, we must pray. The spiritual battle being fought at the border and beyond is not ultimately won with bullets and border walls. It is won on our knees. We must pray for the conversion of cartel members. We must pray for the victims of violence. We must pray for priests and bishops who minister in dangerous conditions. We must pray that God would raise up saints from the rubble, modern-day Cristeros who will witness to the faith even unto death if necessary.

And fifth, we must hope. We must remember that the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ's Church. We must trust that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, and that even in the darkest places, God is at work. The same Virgin Mary who appeared to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, who converted eight million in seven years, is still the Mother of God and still intercedes for her children. Our Lady of Guadalupe is more powerful than Santa Muerte because she points to the One who conquered death.

The hollow rosary in the hands of a killer is a tragedy and a warning. It shows us what happens when faith becomes culture, when symbols replace substance, when baptism is not followed by conversion. But the same rosary in the hands of a saint is a sign of hope. It reminds us that even the worst sinner can be saved, that Christ died for drug traffickers and cartel members just as surely as He died for you and me.

The question is whether we will have the courage to proclaim that truth. Will we tell cartel members that their rosaries are worthless if their hearts are unchanged? Will we call them to repentance, to lay down their weapons, to renounce their false gods and turn to Christ? Will we tell them that Santa Muerte is a demon, that Jesús Malverde is a lie, that only Jesus Christ can save their souls?

America must face the spiritual reality of the border crisis. This is not merely about immigration policy or drug enforcement. This is about the souls of millions, on both sides of the border, who are caught in a web of violence, addiction, and false religion. The Church in the United States cannot be silent. We cannot pretend that this is Mexico's problem alone. The drugs come here. The money flows there. We are bound together in this tragedy.

And we are called together to the solution: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, proclaimed without compromise, lived without hypocrisy, offered as the only true hope for a world enslaved to sin and death.

The rosary in the hands of killers is a sign of a culture that has lost its way, a Church that has failed to catechize, a people desperate for meaning but looking in all the wrong places. But the rosary in the hands of the faithful, those who truly pray it as meditation on Christ's saving work, remains a powerful weapon against the forces of hell.

Let us take up that weapon. Let us pray for conversion. Let us proclaim the truth. And let us trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead can bring life even to the valley of death's shadow that stretches across our southern border.

For greater than Santa Muerte is the God of life. Greater than every narco-saint is the communion of true saints who pray before God's throne. And greater than the cult of death is the truth that Jesus Christ has conquered the grave and offers eternal life to all who turn to Him in faith.

The choice is before us: life or death, blessing or curse, Christ or the false gods. Choose life. Choose Christ. And pray that those wearing hollow rosaries will one day pray them with hearts set free by the blood of the Lamb.

~by Jeff Callaway

Texas Outlaw Poet

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