Pilgrims Flock to Honor Idiot Savant Saint

Yahoo! News - Pilgrims Flock to Honor Idiot Savant Saint

By Tim Gaynor

EL ESPINAZO, Mexico (Reuters) - Thousands of barefoot penitents walked, rolled and even shuffled on all fours to a desert shrine in northern Mexico on Friday to pay homage to a long-dead healer hailed as an idiot savant saint.



Pilgrims from across the Americas descend on the village of El Espinazo each October to visit the tomb of El Nino Fidencio, an eerie man-child figure famed for his playful cures and folk wisdom dispensed in a shrill contralto during the 1920s and 1930s.


"Many regard him as a saint, others as a being of light or spirit guide, and they come to pay off a debt for a favor that he granted," Magdalena Ibarra, a descendant of a local family who adopted Fidencio as a youngster, said at his shrine.


"The festival is celebrated with a great deal of religious fervor and is getting bigger each year. People are coming from as far away as the United States, Canada, Cuba and El Salvador (news - web sites)," she added above the sound of pilgrims singing Mexican folk anthem Las Mananitas.


This year the Ibarra family expect 50,000 pilgrims to attend the three-day bash, which culminates on Sunday -- the anniversary of a divine revelation that the Nino Fidencio said marked his "spiritual rebirth."


Fidencio is not recognized as a saint by the Vatican (news - web sites). He gained an early reputation for faith healing and clairvoyance and won fame throughout Mexico for his playful and unorthodox cures for a range of maladies including cancer and lameness.


He diagnosed the sick by rocking them on a swing in the village, and sometimes lobbed pieces of fruit at them from a rooftop to cure them. Other whimsies included curative country walks, elaborate religious stage shows, and ducking followers in a murky pond behind his single-story adobe home.


Since his death at age 40 in 1938, some followers claim to channel his spirit from the afterlife. They offer pilgrims visiting the mountain-ringed village cures and advice in the folk saint's high-pitched warble.


"He's like a child, he is playful and he talks in a sweet voice," said Maria Guadalupe Galvan, 75, a medium or "materia" who claims to have channeled Fidencio's spirit for more than five decades. "For those that have faith, just hearing his voice helps."


Many believers drive for days to visit the shrine at his home, which includes his cot-like bed, a chipped enamel bathtub that is claimed to cure cancer, and a collection of dozens of wooden crutches discarded by the cured lame.


"The Nino has performed a lot of miracles," emergency room technician Tomas Castro said at the end of a two-day drive from his home in Fresno, California. "Faith brought us here."