LOS ANGELES -- People say he's their guardian, their lawyer, their smuggler. On a recent afternoon, they lined up at his feet with their requests:

Please, my mother needs a visa.

Please, my niece was caught by agents.

Please, I can't go on being illegal.

As a border crisis involving the influx of tens of thousands of children from Central America unfolds, the faithful of Southern California are flocking to Santo Toribio Romo Gonzalez.

The Catholic saint, who they believe watches over immigrants, flew in for his first visit to Los Angeles two weekends ago. He came from a tiny town in the Mexican state of Jalisco in the form of a fragile wooden statue that will tour churches across three counties.

"It cost the price of two first-class tickets to get him here, but we did it," said Rosa Gonzalez of Chatsworth, who handled the saint's transportation. "Now here he is, bringing blessings to everyone."

Romo Gonzalez was a simple priest, killed during a religious uprising in 1928. He was canonized just 14 years ago. But Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, have made him legendary.

They say the saint, often wearing a cowboy hat and boots, miraculously appears to border crossers when they are most desperate: in the desert, along roadsides and in migrant shelters.

Santo Toribio gives them food, money and water. And like a coyote, or smuggler, he helps them cross into the United States. Sometimes, when the path is too perilous, he tells them to turn around and return home.

"I owe him everything," said Jose Ochoa, who showed up to welcome the saint to his church, Santiago de Compostela in Lake Forest. "I couldn't imagine dying without coming to see him to say thank you."

The 32-year-old cook crossed the border illegally in 2005. He came with his son, then 4, to reunite with his wife and family. Before leaving Jalisco, Ochoa said, his grandfather gave him a small, laminated photo of Santo Toribio.

Ochoa had never heard of the saint, but his grandfather told him: "Have faith in him. He will take care of you."

On a recent day, the father of three lit a candle before the 4-foot-tall statue and bowed his head in gratitude.

Many foreigners who enter the United States illegally carry a photo of the light-skinned, blue-eyed saint safely tucked in their wallets. Before they leave Mexico, those who can stop in Santa Ana de Guadalupe, Santo Toribio's hometown.

There, farmworkers have seen their dusty pueblo transformed into a religious mecca.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims arrive in air-conditioned buses each week to pay tribute to Santo Toribio's bones, which are kept in a small casket. Some travel back from Texas, California or Chicago to give thanks for favors fulfilled. Others enter the church on their knees to pray for the safe return of a loved one they haven't heard from in a while.

All around Santa Ana de Guadalupe, businesses bear the saint's name: Santo Toribio Ice Cream, Santo Toribio Pharmacy, Santo Toribio Gift Shop. There's a replica of his modest home, complete with furniture and housewares. In the street, locals pitch their saint-themed wares to tourists: key chains, figurines, T-shirts and pirated CDs.

"He's given many families in town a way to make a living and not have to go north," said Martin Rizo Soto, a priest who has traveled to California to safeguard the statue wherever it goes.

The number of visitors became so overwhelming that a few years ago the town raised enough money to build a church with seating for 1,000 people.

In the United States, Santo Toribio has come to represent solidarity to foreigners facing difficult times.

In 2008, when one of the nation's toughest anti-immigration laws was passed in Oklahoma, a Tulsa church responded by building a shrine to Santo Toribio -- the only one outside Jalisco.

Since then, other churches have asked for his sacred bone relics, as well as visits from the saint. To meet the demand, Santa Ana de Guadalupe a year ago created a travel-friendly statue of Santo Toribio that rests inside a big steel trunk on wheels.

"Now he's able to come to see all the faithful who can't travel back to Jalisco to see him," Rizo Soto said.

Despite the saint's fame, the Catholic Church has yet to recognize him as a patron to immigrants. His popularity tends to leave some Catholics scratching their heads, said Ed Benioff, the Los Angeles Archdiocese's director of the Office of New Evangelization.

Unlike St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Romo Gonzalez, who died a martyr at age 28, never paid particular attention to immigrants.

In fact, in 1920 he wrote a play titled Let's go north! that warned foreigners against traveling to the United States. He worried that they would lose their values, Rizo Soto said.

But decades after Romo Gonzalez was shot to death by Mexican soldiers, the tales of his intervention on behalf of immigrants have spread across Jalisco and beyond.

"He's the people's saint," Benioff said. "His legend has grown from the start in the most grass-roots way."

Santo Toribio recently visited California congregations in Commerce and Lake Forest. Next on his agenda are Hawthorne, Indio, Rancho Cucamonga and Reseda. He will finish with a celebration at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles today.

In Commerce, parishioners from St. Marcellinus carried the 50-pound statue on their shoulders. They danced and sang. Then they took turns touching the most sacred part of the figure, his chest, where a bone from the saint's left ankle is kept behind a round piece of glass.

Quietly they stepped up to him to whisper their requests and to express their gratitude.

Francisca Romero, 56, of Compton held up a gold chain with an angel to have it blessed. She said she became a legal citizen a decade ago.

Now, like many, she showed up concerned for relatives and friends -- and for the latest aliens epidemic playing out in the news.

"Those children," said Romero, who works in a sofa factory. "I want this saint to keep them safe from all harm and to please help us all."

SundayMonday on 07/20/2014