Luis Alberto’s devotion to St Jude started when his cousin died in January while robbing a bank. ‘‘I have all sorts of friends who are criminals and they pray to St Jude,’’ said Alberto, 23, who joined a throng of people in downtown Mexico City on Thursday for one of this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country’s most unusual religious celebrations. ‘‘The drug addicts say when they pray to him, they always have drugs, and the robbers say they rarely get caught.’’St Jude Thaddeus, known in many countries as the patron saint of lost causes, is also known in Mexico as the patron of criminals and prisoners. On the 28th of every month, thousands of devotees come to San Hipolito church, a downtown church nearly 500 years old that hosts the city’s most famous adoration of St Jude. Enough outlaws show up that undercover detectives come to observe. So better-known gangsters stay in their cars, hidden behind tinted windows, dispatching flunkies to the altar with flowers or money.Many Mexican prison cells have statues of St Jude. Benjamin Felix, Mexico’s most famous drug lord, said in a recent prison interview that he kept a St Jude statue in his house while he evaded police for nearly a decade: ‘‘He is the patron saint of hopeless cases like mine.”St Jude, according to the Catholic Church, was an apostle who was clubbed to death by a mob. Even after he was elevated to sainthood, many people were said to have avoided praying to him lest their prayers be mistakenly directed to Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus. So, the legend goes, by the time St Jude heard someone’s prayers, people had tried every other saint with no luck, making him the patron of long shots.As Ramirez arrived at the church, he neared a pair of uniformed police officers. One of them, Robinson Armenta, had just purchased a St Jude candle from one of the dozens of stalls outside the church selling St Jude shirts, calendars, key chains and clocks. Many police stations here keep St Jude statues on display and priests hold special Masses for police devotees. When several police officers accused of links to the Felix drug cartel were released without formal charges in April, they went on a high-profile pilgrimage to San Hipolito church. ‘‘He’s the patron saint for both sides of the law,’’ Hernandez said. ‘‘We all entrust ourselves to him.’’ (LATWP)
