Born Isabel Flores de Oliva to parents of Spanish descent. Her nickname "Rose" comes from an incident in her infancy: a servant claimed to have seen her face transform into a rose, she formally adopted the name at her religious confirmation. Rose seems to have taken St Catherine of Siena as her role-model. She began to fast 3 times a week and became vegetarian. Rose punished herself in secret (a common way of showing deep love and reverence for God at the time). St Catherine while very devout and living as a nun, warned against extreme forms of this.

In the belief that anything that might endanger her relationship with God should be rooted out, and because her beauty was admired, Rose cut off her hair and used to rub her face with pepper to produce disfiguring blotches. Rose was determined to take a vow of virginity, opposed by her parents who wished her to marry. Despite the censure of her parents, she spent many hours contemplating the Blessed Sacrament, which she received daily, a very rare practice. She ignored all attempts by friends and family to dissuade her from her course.

Rose set up a room in the house where she cared for homeless children, the elderly and the sick. Rose sold her fine needlework, and took flowers that she grew to market, to help her family when they fell into financial trouble. She made and sold lace and embroidery to care for the poor; this was the beginning of social services in Peru. Her care was in sharp contrast to the corruption and exploitation of the period.

Refused permission to become a nun, Rose eventually joined the third order of Saint Dominic when she was age 20; she donned the habit of a tertiary and took a vow of perpetual virginity. She lived as a recluse in a hut in the garden of her parents’ home. She wore on her head a thick circlet of silver studded on the inside like a crown of thorns. She prayed and did penance in a little grotto that she had built. Otherwise, leaving her room only for visits to church.

For 11 years she lived this way, with reported intervals of ecstasy, Rose died age 31 years. She was canonised in 1671, the first saint of the Americas and is still much revered, especially in Peru.

BORN: 20 April 1586, Lima, Peru, Spanish Empire

DIED: 24 August 1617, Lima, Peru, Spanish Empire