Who was Santa Rosa de Lima?
By Cicero Moraes - Facial reconstruction of Santa Rosa de Lima from her digitized skull in Lima, Peru, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42706655 . The Catholic Church in Benavides is known as Santa Rosa de Lima. Before we get to a discussion on who this saint is, we will look at a brief history of the parish. First, the parish has not always been known as Santa Rosa de Lima. One of the earliest mentions of a church in Benavides was in 1887 when the Corpus Christi Caller, on July 2, noted that A. L. Muel had finished building a Catholic Church in Benavides. It first appeared in the Official Catholic Directory (OCD) in 1890 as a “chapel” visited by priests from San Diego. The name of the church does not appear in earlier references. The first mention of the parish’s name came in 1916 when the OCD noted that the “mission” at Benavides, still attended by the priest in San Diego, was named St. Paul. This name remained the church’s moniker until 1941...