The Patron Saint of Prostitutes

I stole this from Father V. at "A Priestly Commentary". It's always good to obtain new and interesting information, although I wish I had known this bit years ago.

Father V. originally adopted this from LifeSite News:


Legend has it that Saint Nicholas became aware of a desperately poor parishioner having three daughters with no dowry to recommend them for marriage. The father had planned to sell them into prostitution to provide some means of support. By night, Saint Nicholas secretly brought bags of gold on three separate occasions to the man's home. These generous visitations allowed the three daughters to have sufficient means to avoid whoredom and later strike a marriage covenant. On the third visit to deliver the gift, Nicholas was caught in the act of generosity by the grateful father


I have actually been meaning to blog about this topic for a long time, but how does one introduce the topic of Prostitution? Especially on a Catholic blog?

Several years ago, while in college, I went to live in Mexico for a semester. We studied, lived with host families, and had several possible practicums open to us within the areas of Human and Social Services.

I opted to work with the now non-existant, "Programa Municipal Para el Defenso de Humanos Derechos", (Municipal Program for the Defense of Human Rights) founded and run by Alejandra Fonseca Venegas. She was also an occasional columnist for La Journada, a Mexican newspaper with subscriptions around the world.

The focus of the program was to assist women and men in prostitution in various ways; health, education, and escape. Alejandra was known to hide a desperate woman in the trunk of her car, take her to the bus station, pay her fare...and send her on her way back to her family. Both of them could have been killed by venegeful pimps had they been aware of the clandestine escapes.

Prostitution is big business all over the world, and in Mexico, I was given the great gift of learning to see these souls and their lives through God's eyes.

I remember when we first arrived, thinking that, especially with regard to the male homosexual transvestite prostitutes, that they may fear we wouldn't accept them. There you have the 20-year-old ego-centric perspective on the world; "It's all about me." What a wake-up call! I was to quickly learn that it was WE who needed to be accepted!

The prostitutes were quite gracious and did accept us into their small society. They were willing to forgive my Law Enforcement aspirations because the group I was with was associated with the women who had previously worked there from our college...and any friends of those women were friends of theirs. I was the only one aspiring to be a police officer, but my ability in Spanish (6 years at that point) endeared me to them and they were willing to forgive what they saw as a corrupt foray into the legal world, and thus, the world of the enemy. And in Mexico, the police are indeed the enemy to all. That story is for another day.

I think it is best to explain how some of these people come into the life of prostitution. It was certainly nothing any of them aspired towards - but it WAS a life that ensnared them and left them with no options, men and women both.

In Mexico, prostitution is legal. However, PIMPING is NOT legal. And of course, as anyone knows, the laws in Mexico are somewhat fluid to begin with, rendering them mostly useless. Anyone with enough money to pay the mordida, that is, literally "bite", commonly known as a "bribe", can do whatever they wish. Those without the money will pay with their time in lockup, prison...or with their bodies.

Mexico is also a somewhat patristic society in appearance, although maternal in nature. Yet the male-dominated system does seem to work against the young women who are lured into the life they never asked for.

Tyipcally what will happen is that a pimp will go into the countryside and begin to woo a campesino (peasant, farmer, uneducated) girl. To her eyes, this is an amazing guy who came from the big city and set his sights on HER, setting her all aflutter with his lavish attentions. In the meantime, he talks about how wonderful his life is, how much money he has and projects this image of worldiness and wisdom. He promises the hapless girl a house, children, a family, and convinces her parents of his sincerity. The girl is swept off her feet, her family along with her. He promises her more than she could ever hope for. She is poor, her family doesn't have much at all, and the very idea that she can live such a life is a Cinderella story come true. Mexicans are deeply comitted to family and the pimps know this, so they play up this angle, promising, in his machismo, the children and grandchildren they so desire.

So he cons the family into allowing him to whisk their beloved daughter away to the big city, to his alleged big house, and they send her off, never actually witnessing a wedding, yet they celebrate as though this has happened. And this "wonderful" man has of course also conned the girl into her first sexual experience by this time, making her believe all the pretty lies he tells her. He's got the psychology down pat. And the personal sexual gratification.

The young lady is taken to the city, where she has never gone. Puebla, where the program was housed, is a city of approximately 2 million, home to many wonders, much history....and slums just as abject as any in Mexico City. The Pimp does not take her to the location he promised, but to a hovel in the inner city, conditions worse than any she has ever seen; and then the harsh relality of this venomous snake strikes her. He tells her what she must do, and of course, she refuses. Initially, she perhaps tries to escape; but where does she go? City living is outside of her experience. She does not know how to survive. She is a farm girl and this land is alien to her. The pimp beats her up, he threatenes her...he does everything he can to keep her there, because after all, as far as he is concerned, she is now his property, and he has seperated her from her only safety: her family. He is a predator, not the husband he promised to be.

She continues to object and resists, refusing to do the things he orders her to do. She was looking for a marriage, a home, a family....and he throws her as bait to the leering wolves, withdrawing his sweet nothings in favor of brutal savagery. Perhaps he rapes her, again and again, and arranges for her to be raped by others, and while she screams and struggles, he collects the money and watches in satisfaction. Then as she continues to refuse to work the street voluntarily, he begins to withhold food, then designs other tortures, just for her. As though rape is not enough. Finally, she has no choice; it is either allow herself to be turned out, or die in some special agony.

The pimp defeats her only hope; her family; her refuge. He tells her that if she leaves, he will go to her father and he will tell him what his daughter has done, and they will disown her. He tells her that he already informed her family about her actions (so far uncommitted), and because he is a man, they will take his word over hers, and they have allegedly disowned her. And finally, in resignation, she gives in and she takes many men into her bed, because the only other option is death. And she turns over all the money she earns to her pimp, who in turn collects from her and other women, and all of them are brainwashed, slaves, resigned to their fate, and all of them are dead inside because they believe they are condemned, there is no salvation for them, not in the temporal or spiritual realm. They are condemned by Christians who do not understand why they are there and why they do what they do; they are condemned by society, and they believe they have been condemned by the families they so joyfully said goodbye to so many days, months, or years ago.

On one of our first days, I remember talking with Alejandra; she described the above scenario to me with great sadness. She pointed out several of the women, and I was shocked to learn their ages. They appeared to be much older than proclaimed; some didn't know their ages at all. She said that officially, their program only accepted women 18 and older as they had to do this by law, however there were several who were under that age. She would not turn anyone away; rather listen and accept the lies than leave children without a place to go for help. They had nowhere to go. They had been taken from their families and thrust into this life, and she was willing to stick her neck out to try to help them escape. Alejandra was especially dedicated to the youngest for there was more hope for them. Who can keep from reaching out to children, mere girls, forced into such slavery?

I still remember two of the girls suspected of being under age. They avoided everyone, yet participated in everything, remaining on the fringes - the better to flee any attention. This was their connection to salvation; these were people they understood could help them, so they continued to come, in the hope, perhaps, that one day, Alejandra could send them home, too.

I remember thinking they were like elusive does, standing in the light of dawn for a moment before shyly dashing away. They would smile quickly with great timidity then duck into another room or out the door. I remember seeing these girls and realizing that they were only a few years younger than I, and yet, they seemed older. Wiser. Terrified. It broke my heart. None of us was ever able to get to know them, although they did approach and speak with Alejandra, blessing her with their trust.

Many of the women simply looked old. Alejandra observed, with a far-away look in her eyes, that the women who live this life shorten their days. They are dying. They walk around with the weight of the world upon them, and she commented it was like a "soul-sickness" that just sucked the life out of them. Yes, they would smile, they would chat, they would go about their days taking classes, seeing the doctor, doing aerobics...all those things. Yet by night they were giving their very souls away, just to survive. Because they could not do anything else. And because they were killing their souls, night after night, even if physically they seemed healthy, spiritually, they were dying off a little at a time. Their very desperation was visible in their eyes.

I could see how much Alejandra loved every one of those who entered those dingy rooms.

I know this post is getting long, but I must keep going. I want you to understand those I met, I want you to consider them friends, and I want you all to see them thorugh God's eyes, because, my friends in Christ....these people are your brothers and sisters, whether you care to recognize them or not.

One morning as I entered, I met two women at the small stairway at the door to the Program. A peroxide-redhead sat on the stairs, looking up at her friend, waiting for the morning's class to start. She shifted her gaze to me as I approached and reached upward to grasp my hand. She did not know if I spoke Spanish or not (I did), and she didn't care. She simply grasped my hand, said her name, "Fernanda", and I gave her mine, "Julie". She continued to hold my hand, smiling at me, content with that. I smiled back, not feeling the need to say anything further. That very moment was touched by God's grace, and I saw her as God must see her. She was beautiful, radiant, even, and we had a wordless conversation far more profound than any other I have had either before or since.

I still pray for Fernanda; that mystical connection made her my sister that day, and I don't think I will ever forget her. Even today, I am amazed to have found such a pure soul in such a terrible place. And while yes, she was a prostitute, in looking back, she could have been and may be another Mary Magdalene.

But when I grasped her hand that day and looked into her smiling eyes, I saw Jesus reflected there, smiling through her, and to this day, I am humbled by the experience.

Then there was Titi. That story is more difficult, so I'll start from our beginning and give you the backstory and then the finale. Please keep Titi in your prayers.

When we met Titi, we saw a transvestite male with long blonde hair, the unofficial leader of the homosexual transvestite prostitutes. They were the first to greet and accept us, and interestingly enough, if they accepted us...so did the women. It was they who "screened" us and deemed us acceptable, and Titi had the final vote. It was all unofficial, very friendly, but when we first met them we knew we were under glass.

As an aside, the transvestites liked to be referred to as "she". It was very strange, because when I saw them, I saw men dressed as women, yet to be "proper", I had to call them "she" and use the feminine form of the words which applied to them, directly or indirectly. Yet I could not see them as women; they were in this strange type of limbo, so I found I just had to accept that limbo on their terms. So as I go forward, referring to the transvestites in question as "she", please understand that this person is really a "he".

One day, Alejandra provided to me a couple of articles she had written and published in La Journada about this particular group, and asked me to translate them into English. One of them was a poem about the group in general; the second, a memorial about Titi.

Yes: while we were there, Titi was murdered, brutally murdered. These articles were given to me shortly after we learned of her death, and it hit us all hard. We knew they lived a dangerous life, and Titi had been killed "on the job", so to speak. And this is the reality of their lives. To live and die without the dignity God gave them. So I will tell you Titi's story, as translated and approved by Alejandra back in 1994. One day perhaps I'll provide the full text rather than this summary which cannot give the full impact of Alejandra's words.

"Titi" was actually born in Vera Cruz (in English, "True Cross"), a beautiful little boy. His father died and mother re-married. One day, his step-father took him out to a pond or a lake and put his head under water, threatening to drown him. He abused him, there without witnesses other than God, then put his head back under the water again and said to him that if he ever told anyone, he would let him drown. And that if he did not allow these acts to continue, he would let him drown. And then he took him out of the water for one more time.

The boy, Sandel, knew that he was beaten, so he acquiesed to the abuse, having no choice; endure or drown. Deal with it or be strangled by the snare that was his step-father. And no one would ever know the truth because it would appear to be an accident if he resisted.

One day, Sandel asked his mother what was the meaning of the word "Maricon", which in the vernacular, meant "Fag". His mother did not give a real answer, was horrified and proclaimed, "The worst...the very worst."

So Sandel remained silent, and the abuse continued.

Finally, he did approach his mother and confessed to the abuse. She did not believe him but took the side of the step-father who proclaimed the boy to be lying. Sandel, fearful for his life, fled, and went to Puebla, where he was forced to become what he had been formed to become, again, in order to survive.

Sandel became "Titi", grew his hair, died it blonde, and found a group of people just like him. Yet the boy/man Sandel was gone; only Titi remained. Titi in her blonde hair and made-up face.

When we met Titi, "she" had grown in abilities in many ways and was on her way out of the life of prostitution. She was teaching beauty classes in Alejandra's program, and actually OWNED two hair salons. (She actually invited us there one day...that's another story - involving Mexican police, beer, a strange bus ride, and late home for Comida...).

Titi was doing well, until the reality of this life hit home.

We learned the news when we returned from our mid-semester break, during which we celebrated the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

Titi was found lying face down, tied up and strangled. The police were not investigating. Just another dirty hooker bumped off by a trick, a john...just another soul less in the world. Her life was not worth the work required to find her killer.

There was no one to avenge Titi. By a twist of fate, Titi was murdered by the very method of death she had been trying to escape when she'd fled Vera Cruz so many years before. The words of her stepfather must have been ringing in her ears as she died...

If you do not let me do this...I'll let you suffocate. If you do not let me do this to you again...I will let you drown....


Brothers and Sisters in Christ, prostitution is one of the oldest professions on earth. I do not proclaim to support it - far from it! But we do need to remember that those involved are our siblings. They were created in the image and likeness of God, and I pray that these two special souls reflect that likeness to you. Please remember Fernanda in your prayers, and please remember Sandel, aka "Titi". They were born to be children of God...yet have lived in depravity and without the dignity they deserve. Such is the case of so many others around the world.

My heart still breaks when I think of them, when I remember looking into their eyes, and realizing that I learned more from them than I have from any class I ever paid for.

When I returned to the United States, I remember a dinner at my aunt's home, a cozy Minnesota farmhouse. She was washing some dishes when we arrived and asked me what I had done in Mexico. I tried to explain to her the lives of the women and pseudo-women I'd met, and said, quite inadequately, "They were some of the nicest, most welcoming people I have ever met."

She turned around to gaze at me, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Shocked.

"But HONEY! THEY'RE SINNERS!"

I bit my tongue, and only the Lord knows how much that cost me not to retort that we were BOTH sinners. I knew my words would be useless, meaningless drivel to her. I would never be able to bring these souls to life for her because she had already tried and condemned them without ever considering that they had a story, too. So I swallowed the blood and held back the tears, and left the room, more culture-shocked than ever to be back "home" in the U.S.

Apparently St. Nicholas is the patron saint of prostitutes, so please invoke him and ask him to pray for the souls of all those trapped in this world of sexual slavery, whether by their own choice, or by force.

Your brothers and sisters need you. Pray for them, St. Nicholas!