Tens of thousands of people filled the streets outside the cathedral where the ceremony was conducted, the accounts said, and when the coffin was about to be placed in a hearse a cry went up: “Dr. Hernández is ours!” In a spontaneous display of popular mourning, the coffin was carried to the cemetery on the shoulders of the capital’s citizens.

Over the years, his legend grew. The sick or the injured prayed to him to be cured, and many believed he was responsible for miracles. He was also embraced by the followers of two popular religions that combine elements of Roman Catholicism with African and indigenous beliefs — María Lionza, which is native to Venezuela, and Santería, which spread here from Cuba.

Today Dr. Hernández’s image is ubiquitous in Venezuela, perhaps even more so than pictures of Hugo Chávez, the former president who died last year but is still widely portrayed on posters, on billboards and in graffiti.

Dr. Hérnandez’s familiar figure, usually dressed in a black suit with a high-peaked felt hat and a mustache, his hands behind his back (an image based on a widely reproduced photograph taken during a stay in New York City in 1917), can be seen all over the country — painted on walls, reproduced in small statuettes, and displayed in roadside shrines or simple altars in stores and homes. His image is so instantly recognizable to Venezuelans that a simple dark silhouette of a man in a hat with his hands behind his back is often all that is used to represent him.

“José Gregorio is quintessentially Venezuelan,” said Laura Zambrano, who helps run the sainthood effort conducted by the Archdiocese of Caracas. “He took all of our virtues to an extreme, to the extreme of perfection.”