Lazarus

The San Lazaro of popular devotion is really two biblical figures grown together. The Gospel of John tells of Lazarus of Bethany, brother of Martha and Mary, whom Jesus raised after four days in the tomb, the sign that most directly foreshadows the Resurrection. The Gospel of Luke tells a different story, a parable of a nameless beggar also called Lazarus, his body covered in sores and licked by dogs as he lay at a rich man's gate, who is carried after death to Abraham's side while the rich man is tormented.

The Church keeps them distinct, honouring the raised Lazarus of Bethany as a saint, but centuries of folk piety have merged the two, and it is the suffering beggar, poor, wounded, leaning on crutches among his dogs, who fills the popular image. Under that image San Lazaro became one of the most fervently invoked patrons of the sick and the leprous across the Iberian and Caribbean worlds. In Cuba his shrine at El Rincon draws enormous pilgrimages each 17 December, many arriving on foot or on their knees in thanks for healing.

The popular San Lazaro venerated across the Hispanic and Latin American world draws chiefly on the second biblical Lazarus, the sore-covered beggar of Jesus' parable in Luke 16, who lay at the rich man's gate and was carried after death to Abraham's bosom. From him the saint took his enduring role as patron of the poor, the sick, and above all lepers: medieval leper-hospitals were placed under the name of Lazarus (whence lazaretto and lazar-house), and the crusading Order of Saint Lazarus was founded to care for those afflicted with the disease.

Devotion to San Lazaro as helper of the diseased and the destitute remains intense in Cuba and the wider Caribbean, where pilgrims walk to his shrine to give thanks for healing. As with several such figures, Cuban popular religion has associated his image with an Afro-Cuban counterpart, while in Catholic devotion he is honoured as the beggar raised to glory and the friend of the suffering.

In popular imagery San Lazaro is instantly recognisable: an old, ragged, and infirm beggar, leaning on crutches and covered with sores that dogs lick, a picture drawn directly from the parable of the poor man at the rich man's gate. This should be distinguished carefully from Lazarus of Bethany, the brother of Martha and Mary whom the Gospel of John records that Jesus raised from the tomb after four days, a sign pointing toward the Resurrection.

Western tradition later identified Lazarus of Bethany with a first bishop of Marseille or of Kition (Larnaca) in Cyprus, and his relics were claimed at both places; the Orthodox keep his feast, and Lazarus Saturday before Palm Sunday commemorates the raising. Popular devotion has fused the beggar of the parable and the friend of Christ into a single beloved figure, but the Church distinguishes the raised friend of Jesus from the parable's poor man, whose imagery dominates the folk cult.