'St. Death' calls to the living

Many people in Mexico City's El Tepito slum are looking for help and mercy from Santa Muerte, or St. Death:

Swathed in a cloak and equipped with a long scythe, Mexico's Santa Muerte, or St. Death, is a dead ringer for the Grim Reaper.
But devotees like those in Mexico City's notorious El Tepito slum insist she is a motherly angel of mercy, and they make sure to attend to her like a queen.
Her larger-than-life statue, kept in a glass box at a street-side sanctuary, is draped in lace-trimmed satin. Her hooded, grinning skull is crowned with a rhinestone tiara, and every bony finger protruding from beneath her cloak boasts a glittering ring.
"She's not frightening. She's beautiful," insisted welder Isiel Alvarado, 27, flipping up his T-shirt to expose a tattoo of St. Death on his tummy. Genuflecting and crossing himself repeatedly before the shrine, Alvarado said he believes in St. Death because she delivered his brother safely from prison.