That Mary is revered as equal to God is a common protestant myth. Mary is not revered as an equal to God. Mary is revered as the Mother of Jesus who is revered as the Son of God, and therefore the Theotokos, or God-bearer, often translated into English as Mother of God.
Those who reside in Heaven are believed to be the great cloud of witnesses mentioned by Paul in Hebrews 12:1, and are deemed to be saints eternally living before God, and therefore accessible to join us in our petitions to the Father. None of them are believed to be equivalent to God, they are not expected to answer prayers in the same way God answers pray, they are simply able to join us in our prayers.
When Jesus was dying on the cross, he told His unnamed beloved disciple (commonly believed to be John, but believed by some Christians, with some Biblical support, to be Andrew), "Behold your mother," thereby giving His mother to all those He loves, in perpetuum. He told His mother, "Behold your Son," which is a double entendre with no sexual overtones or connotations. Her Son was on the cross, and she was to behold Him; her son just given to her by her Son and Lord was the unnamed disciple Jesus loved, and she was to behold him. [I've not seen anybody else read this meaning into it, so if you (generic) use it, please cite me as the author of it as my intellectual property.] Mary therefore is to behold her Son, Jesus, as well as all those He loves, in perpetuum.
Mary joins us in our prayers to God when we ask her to. She has freedom to join us in our prayers to God even when we don't ask her to. She has the freedom to visit essentially anyone she wants, or is sent to, and has appeared to many persons not associated with Churches of Apostolic Succession (Catholic and Orthodox).
Mary has never appeared to anyone as equal to God. That is Satan's sin, and should Mary ever do that, she would be cast from Heaven, the same as Satan was, but she never has or will do that. Anyone who claims she has is committing slander or libel against her. She's used to that; people have been slandering and libeling her since Jesus was conceived. I'm sure it cuts her deep into the quick of her heart, but she embraces forgiveness just as Jesus did.
Catholicism is not a sect. That is also a common protestant myth.
Catholic means universal or all-embracing. The Catholic Church, which embraces "Jews and Greeks" (Greeks was used as a slang term of the day for what is now referred to as goyim) was started by Jesus after His resurrection when He sent His disciples out into the whole world to proclaim His message. Prior to His death, He ministered primarily to Jews. The center of authority of the Catholic Church slowly migrated from Jerusalem to the Christians at Rome under Peter and his successors over the next 60-ish years, and was known as Roman Catholicism because that's where it was located. Other disciples started other bases of authority where they resided, such as the Churches in Jerusalem, Corinth, etc. In 590, the Christianized Roman Empire declared the Church at Rome to be the Holy Roman Catholic Church and imbued it with tremendous secular and religious power and authority. Many centuries later, a number of those churches separated from Catholicism into highly related Orthodoxy. Catholicism and Orthodoxy maintain a nominally friendly kinship.
The Catholic Church, like all churches, has survived periods of corruption. When Martin Luther separated from the Catholic Church, which was not his goal, and the protestant reformation movement took off strong, it made the Catholic Church take a step back, look at themselves, repent of many of their excesses, and engage in their own reformation. It was too late to recall many of the hurt and angry people left in the wake of the corruption they had been practicing. The "church" has since split into more than 300 denominations, including a number of protestant, evangelical, and other sects. Jesus never wanted it to be like that. He prayed fervently for His followers to stay together, but angry human beings interfered with God granting His prayer.
The Catholic Church was never a sect, although there are Christian sects that claim to be Catholic, but are not, and have never been recognized by the Catholic Church.
In the pictured mosaic, which hangs in St. Bonaventure University Chapel, Mary is protectively sheltering saints as their mother.
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