First question, is it a normal statue or rosary apart from the use, or have they been tweaked?
If they have been tweaked, so that a specific message alien to the Catholic truth and essential to Santeria is unequivocally expressed, a bishop could actually command the destruction.
Now, this is probably not the case. At least not always.
What if it is a normal, Catholic looking, statue or rosary, which happens to have been used in Santeria?
Well, while destruction could still be an option, another one is also there. Exorcism and blessing, or reblessing.
Now, some people might pretend (like Puritans*) that a Miraculous Medal is the same thing.
No, it isn't.
The idea isn't that Mary's spirit is in the medal, at all, it's that the image helps devotion to Her, and God makes sure this is something She can respond to, by carrying the prayers of Her children.
And yes, as She is in Heavenly Glory, She has that capacity, it is also because Her Son was all His life, including on the Cross, in Heavenly Glory that He could mediate for each who is saved.
And yes, we are Her children:
When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son.
[John 19:26]
And the dragon was angry against the woman: and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ
[Apocalypse (Revelation) 12:17]
The idea behind the Medal is also that the priest who blessed the medal or the person who gave the medal can pray for the one carrying it. There are Protestants who will attach the same function to giving someone a Bible or a Cross.
Now some will say that The Lord commanded the Bronze Serpent and the Angels on the Ark, but not any image of Jesus or of Mary.
As to images of Jesus, there are the ones on the facecloth of Oviedo and the Shroud of Turin, which He made supernaturally, as to those of Mary, Sister Catherine Labouré had a revelation about it, and the bishop decided it was from God.
Before that, St. Luke while hearing Mary's testimony painted Her, and She understood it was a correct thing to do. So did the Church, at least those around the events. Exactly as the Church knew St. Luke's Gospel and Acts were inspired.
A Catholic carrying the Miraculous Medal is in the same position as a person who was bitten by the Serpent and looked on the Bronze Serpent. Moses was the authority given to Israelites back then. The Archbishop of Paris, Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen, had Apostolic authority to discern, like Moses had the origin of the Old Covenant authority.
But with the Bronze Serpent, there were healings, actual miracles. Right?
During a deadly cholera pandemic, the Daughters of Charity started distributing the medals. After reports of miraculous cures, the demand for the medal rapidly grew in France and other graces were reported, such as conversions, and it became widely known in the following decades as the Miraculous Medal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_Medal
This was the second cholera pandemic, the first one to reach this far into Europe (the first pandemic had only reached Russia).**
Reminds me, the last plague epidemic involved a break-out in Marseille. The Bishop Henri François Xavier de Belsunce de Castelmoron helped to get the epidemic finished, by personally visiting the sick sometimes, by measures, by field hospitals. He was also not a huge favourite with Puritans, because he hated Calvinist doctrine as much as he hated the Plague.
The "rabid" or "fanatic" anti-Protestant Belsunce and the the "superstitious" medal have helped to cure last outbreak of Plague and first outbreak of cholera in France.
The apparitions in Lourdes and Fatima have involved requests for statues, and these have been approved, again, by bishops. Lourdes, again, has cured a lot of sick. Not unlike the Bronze Serpent.
However, behind the words of one at least pretended ex-Catholic running a "ministry" named Philippians 1:9, there is a different kind of argument too.
- The Bible contains one commandment specifically against images.
- God can make exceptions even from His own commandments.
- The exceptions must be explicitly from God, also contained in the Bible.
Given the killings of Canaanean children, and given Samson and maybe even (back before the Grace) Razias, I would say, yes, God can make exceptions even from direct commandments.
However, this is not the general status of religious images.
I very much deny the first of these tenets, that the Bible contains one commandment specifically against images. I state that the following is one commandment, not two:
3 Thou shalt not have strange gods before me 4 Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth 5 Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and keep my commandments.
[Exodus 20:3-6]
Here is Bishop Richard Challoner's comment:
[4] "A graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing": All such images, or likenesses, are forbidden by this commandment, as are made to be adored and served; according to that which immediately follows, thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them. That is, all such as are designed for idols or image-gods, or are worshipped with divine honour. But otherwise images, pictures, or representations, even in the house of God, and in the very sanctuary so far from being forbidden, are expressly authorized by the word of God. See Ex. 25. 15, and etc.; chap. 38. 7; Num. 21. 8, 9; 1 Chron. or Paralip. 28. 18, 19; 2 Chron. or Paralip. 3. 10.
Apart from the question whether the image itself is adored or served and not, there is also that whether the image is of a strange god. In the Old Testament, God could not be depicted, because He was not as yet become Man. Depicting friends of God when He could not Himself be depicted could have given the emotional impact of making them more relatable and therefore more important than Him. Even if not originally so, they would have quickly risked becoming images of strange gods.
In the New Covenant, God has become Man, and can be depicted. Therefore the affection that images of His friends, first His Holy and Blessed Mother, can kindle, can easily be balanced by the affection that images of Himself can kindle, and they do not risk becoming images of strange gods. The point of all the times God orders the making of images is, He is showing that images in and of themselves were not the point, this was a ritual application of the commandment against strange gods.
So, whatever can or should be done against someone's Santeria abuse of Marian devotionals, don't apply that to normal use of the Catholic devotionals.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
All Souls
2 Nov. 2026
Commemoratio omnium Fidelium Defunctorum.
* See also Puritans at Salem Village (Now Danvers)
** The people who pretend the European Middle Ages were plagued by cholera are wrong. The pathogen existed in the Middle Ages, but in India, and the first cholera pandemic started in Calcutta. Unlike what one Robidoux thought: Life in the Middle Ages was Usually Not Miserable, and in Europe Involved No Cholera,
