Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez
From Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers
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Dr. Jose Gregorio Hernandez, called "The Servant of God," is a spiritual personage who is immensely popular in Latin America, especially among the poor who are under served by medical insurance and may live far from modern hospitals. Devotees call on him for proper diagnosis and healing by a conventional doctor. He is considered the patron of medical students as well.
Dr. Hernandez was a Venezuelan physician in life. He died in 1919 while traveling to visit a poor patient in his native Venezuela. Although not a saint, he has been beatified; the step before formal canonization in the Roman Catholic Church. The Church has begun the long and rigorous process of establishing him as an official saint, and many healing miracles have been attributed to him.
Dr. Hernandez is usually pictured as he looked in life, a mustached man wearing a neat suit and tie, with or without a hat. It is customary to make offerings of thanks to saints for their intercession, but many devotees say that Jose Gregorio Hernandez is as humble now as he was in life, and prefers that rather than magnify his name or purchase flowers to honour him, those he helps should donate time or money to help the poor and ill obtain medical services.
