 She looks like Mother Mary, but she's a skeletal version, surrounded by candles and in closets and off rooms. They pray to her. Some say it's brujería, brujería popular among a wide variety of people in Mexico, from gang members to drug dealers to you name it. Santa Muerte is venerated in the same way as most saints in the Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church has said, we don't recognize Santa Muerte. She is a death saint.