Devout Catholics visiting the Guadalajara Cathedral often take a few minutes to linger and pray in front of a shrine supposedly showcasing the preserved corpse of Santa Inocencia, a young girl to whom many miracles have been attributed.
Inocencia belongs to the world of the “incorrupt” – a Roman Catholic belief that Divine Intervention allows some humans to avoid decomposition after death as a sign of their holiness.
Although the Catholic church says it does not recognize embalmed bodies as incoruptibles, most investigators believe the 250 or so incorrupt saints displayed in churches around the world have undergone some kind of post-death processing, perhaps encasement with adipocere, or mortuary wax, and then painted.
Nonetheless, such rationalizing does not concern the faithful unduly and many Catholics gain solace and comfort from their adoration of “incorrupt” saints.
The Guadalajara diocese’s “official” story of how Inocencia came to find a resting place in the metropolitan Cathedral goes like this.
Inocencia was a bright young girl who loved to listen to her school friends talk about their “first communions.” One day, she returned home to tell her father that she also wanted to have a first communion. Her father became angry, hit her and told her to forget such “foolishness.”
She ran to her room crying, wishing that her dead mother was there to comfort her.
The next day Inocencia washed her tear-stained face and went to school as usual. On her way home she heard prayers and orations coming from inside of a house that she passed. She sat outside a window on a rock and began to repeat what she was hearing. Every day from then on, she would stop, sit, listen and learn the texts.
One day, the nun giving the catechism classes heard Inocencia repeating her lessons from outside the window. She invited the girl inside to join the others. Unbeknown to her father, Inocencia remained in the class until she was ready to take the Eucharist.
On the great day, Inocencia, resplendent in a white dress the nun had lent her and candle in hand, received the body of Christ along with other children.
Filled with joy, she returned home to give her father the good news. He wasn’t in the living room but she found him in the kitchen. When Inocencia told her father that she had taken her first communion, he turned around with his head bowed and plunged a knife into her chest.
Neighbors carried Inocencia’s body to the Cathedral, where she was laid out for all to see as a silent example of the deep love of a child for the Eucharist.