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BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary): Sightings & Apparitions

Our Lady of the Underpass?

Tribune staff report
Published April 18, 2005, 1:35 PM CDT

Curiosity seekers joined the faithful today to view what some said was an image of the Virgin Mary at an underpass of the Kennedy Expressway on Chicago's Northwest Side, CLTV reported.

About 20 people were among the first to perceive the image shortly before midnight on a concrete wall of the Fullerton Avenue viaduct in the city's Bucktown neighborhood, officials said.

By this morning, television news crews were on the scene and media reports were spreading the word of the alleged apparition.

People milled about, taking photos and shooting video of what some were calling "Our Lady of the Underpass," WGN-Ch. 9 reported. Some prayed and set lighted candles and flowers at the base of the image.

Officers of the Chicago Police Department and troopers of the Illinois State Police were nearby in case they were needed to direct traffic.

"It's a miracle. It's an image. You can't describe it. It's the first time I've seen something like this," said one witness, Jose Recinos.

Another passerby, Snezana Dilorazo, said she and her family noticed something on the viaduct wall and stopped for a closer look.

"We were driving the car, and we stopped by because we've seen the reflection," she said. "We thought maybe it was Jesus Christ," but on closer inspection, the family decided, "it's the Holy Mother," Dilorazo said.

Some witnesses told WGN the image was more visible on camera or when there was less light. Officials, though, said the pattern on the wall simply might be a stain caused by road salt dripping from the expressway.

Tribune staff reporter Tom Rybarczyk and Tribune wires contributed to this story.


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Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
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Article Last Updated: 04/17/2005 12:14:44 AM

Images of faith under a sheltering elm

Photographer documents small treasures at defaced SLC shrine
By Sam Vicchrilli
The Salt Lake Tribune


Visitors leave candles and religious and personal artwork at the base of the tree. (Marguerite H. Roberts )
Photographer Marguerite H. Roberts first took interest in the American elm some believe bore the image of a weeping Virgin Mary while walking home from work.
"I noticed people stopping by there to light a candle," she said in a phone interview. "I was intrigued by the place and the changes that happened there."
Roberts documented these changes of people, climate and objects with her digital camera over a period of four years, ultimately compiling them for an exhibit titled "Seasons at the Shrine: A Photographic Documentary." The exhibit opened Friday at Art Access II, 339 W. Pierpont Ave., Salt Lake City. It will hang through May 10.
Roberts submitted her exhibit to the gallery last fall during a call for public proposals. It was selected for exhibition by board members of Art Access, headed by Ruth Lubbers.
"It was something unusual that happened locally and that had never been covered in the arts," Lubbers said. "I was intrigued that after all these years, someone had been documenting the happenings around the tree. These are beautiful photographs, small treasures."
Asked about her favorite image, Lubbers singled out a photo "of the tree at twilight with votive candles glowing. It has a magical ambience about it." In this photograph, Roberts wanted to capture the "perfume-y scent when the candles are lit."
An image Roberts especially likes is a wintry one of statues of the Madonna. "It was snowing and someone had put big plastic bags over the statues to protect them. I thought that was special, that someone went and did that."
In addition to effigies, people have left behind stickers, flowers, candles, baby shoes and pictures of a religious and personal nature.
But don't go to the park at 300 E. 700 South in Salt Lake City to confirm or disprove the Virgin Mary's visage. Vandals have gouged the part of the tree where the image is believed to have been created (on a flat knothole when a large branch was cut off by city workers in May 1997).
"It's a sad commentary on what people want to do these days," Roberts said.
A couple of photos in the exhibit serve as before-and-after visuals. One is a close-up of the image before the vandalization - “It does look like the Virgin Mary," according to Lubbers - while another shows the tree post-gouging, with splintered, gaping depressions around a steadily leaking opening in the wood.
Just days after the passing of Pope John Paul II, the area around the tree was encompassed by wilting flowers and rows of candles, their glass rims blackened by now-extinguished flames. Icons plaster a wooden board in front of the tree, next to a metal staircase the city built a few years ago. An unsigned painting of a boat is nailed into the bark, along with photographs of Latinos.
The Catholic Latino community seems to have a special affinity for the tree because of its resemblance to Mary as she appeared in an apparition in 16th-century Mexico, which became known as Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City has not investigated or recognized the Virgin Mary image.
Roberts, an active Episcopalian, found this "cultural phenomenon . . . unique in contrast to the predominant religion" in Salt Lake City. "I like and respect what's going on [at the tree]. People should be open to other points of view and culture, and what is viewed as a spiritual part of life. To make fun or demean it isn't being open and respectful of other belief systems."

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About the artist

Marguerite H. Roberts moved to Salt Lake while in high school and earned a masters degree at the University of Utah in 1976. Her degree was in English, but her penchant for photography (something she's been doing for "about 25 years") has been the driving force in her professional life. In addition to Art Access, Roberts' diverse photography has been shown in galleries throughout Salt Lake and Davis Counties. Another exhibit, "Cuba Dreams," is on display at Two Creek Coffeehouse, 502 E. Third Ave. Beginning May 14, an exhibit titled "Puzzle Pictures: Color Abstraction," by Roberts and Kathleen Gardner, will hang at the Anderson-Foothill Library, 1135 S. 2100 East.

At Art Access II

l "Seasons at the Shrine: A Photographic Documentary," by Marguerite H. Roberts, will hang until May 10 at Art Access II Gallery, 339 W. Pierpont Ave. in Salt Lake City.

l Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 801-328-0703.
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Extensive Marian madness on this site - link below, comprising messages from the BVM and her son as channelled by a New York seer, Veronica Lueken:

http://www.roses.org/

Some of the Directives are predictable enough: rock music is from Satan or Wicca, AIDS is Gods vengeance, abortion, well she's had a think and come out against it, surprisingly. Oh and incidentally UFOs are demons.

So why bother with these vapourings at all? Well there is the very curious Directive 50 in which the BVM gives her blessing to the rumours of the time that the Pope Paul VI had been replaced by an imposter:

"My child, I bring to you a sad truth, one that must be made known to mankind .... Our dear beloved Vicar, Pope Paul VI, he suffers much at the hands of those he trusts.... He is not able to do his mission. They have laid him low, My child. He is ill, he is very ill. Now there is one who is ruling in his place, an impostor, created from the minds of the agents of Satan. Plastic surgery, My child - the best of surgeons were used to create this impostor . . ."
Our Lady, September 2, I975.

http://www.roses.org/directives/direct50.htm

This type of rumour had circulated in the last years of the 19th Century about Pope Leo XXIII but this application of the rumour to Paul VI was a new one on me. :shock:
 
James Whitehead said:
Re: Our Lady of the Underpass as posted by Emps on 19th April.

Photo here:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nation ... 3752.photo

Very rude spoof version here:

http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2005/042205.asp

:shock:
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And now it's been vandalized. :evil:

Police: Man defaced Virgin Mary image

Friday, May 6, 2005 Posted: 8:57 AM EDT (1257 GMT)


CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- A man was arrested for allegedly scrawling the words "big lie" over a stain on an expressway underpass that some believed was an image of the Virgin Mary.

Authorities then painted over the stain because it had been defaced, police spokesman David Banks said Friday.

Authorities charged Victor Gonzalez, 37, of Chicago, Illinois, with criminal damage to state property, a misdemeanor. Witnesses had seen him painting the image, Banks said. A telephone listing for Gonzalez could not immediately be found.

A steady stream of the faithful and the curious, many carrying flowers and candles, had flocked to the emergency turnoff area under the Kennedy Expressway since last month. On Friday, some people gathered at the site and expressed sorrow.

The stain was likely the result of salt runoff, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Worldwide, people have been drawn to images believed to resemble the Virgin Mary seen on windows, fence posts and walls.

One of the best known was an image on windows of an office building in Clearwater, Florida, that drew hundreds of thousands of viewers after it was spotted in 1996. Experts said the image was created by corrosion. The windows were shattered last year, and a teenage boy pleaded guilty to felony criminal mischief and sentenced to 10 days in jail.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/06/underp ... index.html
 
lopaka said:
And now it's been vandalized. :evil:
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Some people are just idiots :(

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A long article on the Virgin of Betania:

Venezuela: the Marian apparitions of Betania attract an international following

José Orozco
2 May 2005

May brings devotees of the Virgin Mary to sites of Marian fervor around the world. In Venezuela, as usual, many will flock to the country's Caribbean beaches on weekends in May, while others make pilgrimages to its religious sites.

One of the most important sites is Betania outside Caracas. The site inspires profound faith in its followers, who come seeking peace and prosperity, or return to offer their gratitude for petitions granted.

The Virgin of Betania's messenger, the late Maria Esperanza De Bianchini, seems destined for sainthood. Maria Esperanza, as she is popularly known, purportedly saw the Virgin for the first time in 1976 at her family's Betania estate, which now draws throngs of devotees with a fondness for the mystical.

Seeing things

Maria Esperanza claimed to have seen things from a very young age. As an adult, she purportedly received a vision from Saint John Bosco about her life's mission, which would pave the way for everything that came after.

That vision told Maria Esperanza that in four years she would meet her husband, and that he would be carrying a sword. Maria Esperanza met her husband Geo Bianchini on the streets of Rome, thinking that the young man might be the one. But Maria Esperanza fell ill after returning to Venezuela. She wrote Bianchini to say the wedding was off, although they'd barely dated.

But three months after the letter, Maria Esperanza purportedly received a message telling her to find Bianchini. Back in Italy, Maria Esperanza brought a nun to their date for leverage. On that trip, Maria Esperanza saw Bianchini, who provided security for Cardinals, in a church carrying a sword as his job required.

The Bianchini family today includes six daughters, all named María, and a son, plus 20 grandchildren. To many, they represent a model family. Growing up as Maria Esperanza's children meant a rather unusual childhood. But as they tell it, growing up with a mother who claimed to see the Virgin was no big deal.

“The supernatural was natural,” said Maria Auxiliadora, one of the youngest of the six Marias. “We grew up in that.”

The Bianchini family specifically bought the Betania estate because of a vision Maria Esperanza purportedly received. The fulfillment of that vision came on March 25, 1976 when Maria Esperanza claimed to have seen the Virgin in a grotto by a tiny stream at the foot of a small hill.

According to Maria Auxiliadora, the Virgin told her mother: “I am Mary, Virgin and Reconciler of all peoples. I come to reconcile you.”

But the Virgin of Betania took off after 1984 when over a hundred people claim to have seen her on the anniversary of her apparition. Children started yelling that they'd seen the Virgin, drawing the rest of the worshippers to the grotto. In a span of three and a half hours, the Virgin appeared seven times, according to the devout who were at Betania that day.

“It was like a cloud that formed in front of you,” said Maria Auxiliadora. The people around her described exactly what she was seeing, confirming what her eyes told her. “It was very detailed, and bright white. And it moved.”

“I thought it was the sun shining on a plant,” said Maria Esperanza Bianchini, her mother's namesake and the eldest Maria, expressing her initial skepticism. She claims she saw “a thousand stars on her dress” and smelled roses, the perfume of Heaven's garden, the Virgin purportedly told her mother.

Hugo Liscano couldn't believe what he was seeing. “I thought it had to be the sun's reflection,” said Liscano. “Or that a woman had dressed in white and gone up into the vegetation.”

As common as the supernatural might have been for the Bianchini children, seeing an apparition for the first time was a life-altering experience.

“You feel at home,” said Maria Auxiliadora. “You feel understood, not judged.” But apparitions also inspire guilt and shame. “You feel unworthy of that love. You want to cry and ask forgiveness,” added Maria Auxiliadora.

“You feel that Heaven is more real than this,” said Maria Esperanza, the daughter. “But what shame. You think 'who am I to deserve this?'”

For Liscano, nothing prepares you for such an experience and life thereafter means trying to grasp its meaning. “All the rules get broken [when you see an apparition],” he said. “It opens a window onto a place to which you've never had access.”

Everyone who claims to have seen the Virgin at Betania in 1984 feels a deep spiritual commitment, although for the Bianchini family it runs deeper. “You feel a responsibility from childhood,” said Maria Auxiliadora. “[God] is asking you for something. You must be willing to give your life.” Her oldest sister echoes that sentiment: “It's a lifelong commitment.”

“The question of why you were chosen that day follows you for the rest of your life,” according to Liscano. “You spend your life creating the response to that question.” The experience of seeing an apparition also erases doubts and strengthens faith, he adds.

Yet the impact of seeing an apparition isn't the be all and end all. What one feels is just as important. “It's not the supernatural acts themselves” but the “sensation of a greater power” that marks you, according to Maria Auxiliadora.

A Venezuelan saint

In the aftermath of the 1984 apparition, Monsignor Pio Bello, Bishop of the Diocese of Los Teques, investigated the apparition, finally giving it his seal of approval in 1987. Although the official recognition must have boosted the Virgin of Betania's following, the faithful fuel their devotion to the mystical with or without legitimacy. Maria Esperanza likewise followed a greater calling than any worldly authority, and as befits the Virgin's messenger, seems destined for sainthood.

According to her daughter Maria Esperanza, the Bianchini family is slowly beginning the process to prove sainthood. “We are collecting information and preparing ourselves,” she said.

The purported apparitions might get all the attention, but there are plenty of minor miracles that count in the beatification process.

In her liftime, Maria Esperanza purportedly “gave birth” to 15 roses. Ana Lugo, one of about 100 members of the Betania Civil Association, a community of devotees, claims to have witnessed one such birth.

After a long day at Betania in which praying had kept them from eating or drinking much water, Lugo saw Maria Esperanza turn suddenly pale.

“[Maria Esperanza] loosened two buttons [on her blouse],” explained Lugo, “and she breathed deeply. Her arm was damp and cold. In the middle of her chest something red appeared. I thought it was a relic. Then I see a red button coming out. I don't know how I didn't faint. Then the rose appeared with dew and released a terrific scent. I saw a spot of blood on her chest, which Maria Esperanza closed with one of the rose's petals.”

Around 1990, Maria Esperanza was giving the blessing at the end of a Betania mass as was her custom when, according to Carolina Fuemayor, another community devotee and its unofficial public relations liaison, Maria Esperanza levitated off the ground. “We've got that on video,” she said. As she performed the blessing, Maria Esperanza apparently experienced a transfiguration, becoming possessed by Jesus Christ, who in effect gave the blessing.

Maria Esperanza also purportedly healed many ill and saw inside many people. Lugo was one of the latter. “I never imagined that someone could tell me my life without knowing me,” she said. When Lugo met Maria Esperanza, “she narrated my life to me in detail.”

The Virgin of Betania and her messenger have developed a large following locally, and have been making believers out of people around the world, particularly in the U.S. from which 77 devotees made the pilgrimage during Holy Week this year.

Lost and found

Jim Foley first came to Betania in 1997 through Sister Margaret, a nun he knew from Massachusetts. His impressions of Maria Esperanza seem rather run of the mill: “I prayed with her,” he explained, “and she had such humility. She spread love and reconciliation. I was impressed by how she'd stay to talk to the last person. Evangelization can be so tiring.”

When Maria Esperanza fell ill while in New Jersey on an evangelization trip last year, Foley went to see her. That's when his relationship with Maria Esperanza, the daughter, started. The messenger had purportedly received a vision, which indicated that her eldest daughter would fall in love with a man who owned a beige car just as Foley did. Before she died, Maria Esperanza blessed their relationship.

Foley works as Maintenance Director at Betania 2, the second of what Maria Esperanza envisioned as 12 Betania religious centers around the world. According to Foley, Maria Esperanza dug up a rock with Jesus Christ's visage where Betania 2's Spiritual Life Center now stands.

As an American Catholic, Foley's deepest longings have been stirred by the Bianchini family's togetherness. “[In America], the family structure is crumbling,” explained Foley. “Children are taking care of themselves. But this family sticks together.”

Like other Betania devotees, Foley seems to think that Venezuela is the promised land. Proof appears to come in the postponement of his wedding, which he attributes to God's plans.

Although he gets a little frustrated, Foley figures that's the way it has to be. “In God's world, it's not that way,” he said, referring to his American sense of time and scheduling. Asked if the issue isn't cultural rather than spiritual, Foley shrugs off the suggestion.

Everyone who comes to Betania to worship its Virgin considers the estate hallowed ground. But there are those who go so far as to think that Betania is the site of a “New Jerusalem,” or a “New Eden.” Wendy Benedict, a former travel agency owner and operator from Kansas City, is one of them.

Benedict started coming to Betania about 15 years ago. A fervent Catholic, she was curious about what went on there. The Virgin appeared during Benedict's first visit, she claims.

“An illuminated cross began to form,” recounts Benedict. “It got bigger and brighter and formed into Our Lady.” The Virgin even spoke to her, saying “You are a blessed child and your future will be greater than anything you can imagine.”

That's what started Benedict's relationship with Maria Esperanza and Betania. For ten years, Benedict's devotion brought her to Venezuela once every two months.

Asked what impressed her so deeply about Maria Esperanza, she says: “I don't even know where to begin. There was nobody like Maria Esperanza. How many people can say they knew a living saint? It doesn't happen everyday.”

Asked if Betania is the New Eden, Benedict immediately replies: “Absolutely.” Echoing Foley, Benedict claims that it's family values that draw her to the site. “We have lost our family values [in the U.S],” she said. “What we lost, you still have.”

Many other American pilgrims seem to share Benedict's yearning for family values and a Heaven on Earth. When told that poor Venezuelan families often lack a stable father figure, the pilgrims express surprise.

For Benedict, Betania is serious business. “This is our holy ground. Once you get that feeling of being in the presence of the Lord, you have to return. We firmly believe that this would be the New Eden.”

Probably because of Maria Esperanza's teachings, Fuenmayor says that people around the world will one day seek refuge in Venezuela. She too believes in Betania as the New Eden.

Otty Ossa Ariztizabal, the Los Teques priest that conducts mass at Betania, calls it “a very beautiful center of Marian fervor, one of the most important in the world.” But he stops short of promoting the site as a Holy Land. “I don't believe in that,” he said, expressing typical clerical skepticism.

Pilgrim's progress

Carolina Santiago has been coming to Betania since she was a girl, mostly for the tiny stream's holy water. Jesús Hernandez comes to ask for help, or express his gratitude for a petition granted, on issues of health, family, and employment. Some swear by the Virgin more deeply than others, but all believe in her powers to help and heal.

The devout have placed a multitude of plaques on the Betania walls. The standard plaque reads: “Thank You Virgin of Betania for the Petition Granted.” A group of tin plaques suggests the poverty of some devotees. Others have made their own plaques, on the fly it would seem.

One plaque consists of thick cardboard with the following message scrawled on a mirror: “Virgin of Betania: I petition you for help with my needs.” Instead of thanking the Virgin, this one asks for a favor.

On these walls, one finds photographs of cars for which the devotee presumably gives thanks. One also comes across what look like xeroxes of diplomas, the devotees expressing thanks for help in graduating against all odds.

Next to the chapel, and behind a simple chainlink fence, stands the Virgin of Betania in her grotto. Flower offerings crowd before her as her followers gaze in wonder outside. As is common at religious temples, Betania has an air of peace and joy about it.

Some American pilgrims think that the Catholic Church in the U.S neglects its members' mystical needs. For them, one of the American Church's main problems comes in this gap between clergy and laity. While this perception festers, Marian worship flourishes.

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José Orozco

Website of Maria Esperanza (Spanish and English): www.mariaesperanza.com
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Apparitions of Mary leave lasting impression

May 29, 2005

BY LISA DONOVAN Staff Reporter


The waves of worshippers who snarled traffic on Fullerton at the entrance to the Kennedy Expy. are gone.

But the dozen vases of fresh roses, tall flickering votive candles and the trickle of faithful are evidence of a tidy, round-the-clock vigil for the Virgin Mary -- whose image, some say, emerged last month on the underpass wall.

If history is any indication, the popularity of these so-called apparitions fade. But the image will live on as a place of reverence for believers and a curiosity to others, as is the case in several Chicago area communities where nearly a dozen images have been spotted in the last 25 years.

# About 2 million faithful have gone to worship at St. Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church on the Northwest Side since a picture of Mary appeared to weep on her name day back in 1986. Today, perhaps a dozen worshippers -- some regular visitors -- still make the trek to the church when it opens its doors for veneration on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

# Crowds trampled graves, precipitating the need for a special parking lot at Queen of Heaven Cemetery, where in 1991 a man said he saw a fiberglass crucifix bleed. The crowds have trailed off, a cemetery spokeswoman said recently.

# And in Joliet, where a shadowy outline of Mary was seen in the window of a vacant house in 1999, the crowds that clogged Abe Street have disappeared. Today, the house is occupied, and the neighbors, who were going about their business one night last week, turned down the rap music thumping from a Dodge Neon after a reporter stopped to look at a shrine created at the front gate of the house.

Nothing contrary to teachings

To be sure, the shrines created at the sightings can be a mystery unto themselves. Consider the corner of Rogers and Honore on the city's Far North Side. That's where, in 2001, some say the Virgin Mary's likeness turned up in the oval scar of a tree trunk. The tree is gone, one longtime resident says, but year-round, fresh flowers and lighted candles adorn a waist-high shelving unit-turned-altar.

Earlier this month, an older woman pushing a stroller stopped abruptly before the site, bowing her head and making a sign of the cross. Moments later, she is asked what this all means to her.

The woman, who speaks only Spanish, explains that she has no idea what unfolded here. As her daughter translates, she reveals she is only visiting the neighborhood. But surely this spot, complete with the tall burning votives with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe wrapped around the glass candle holder, must be sacred.

The Rev. James Presta, rector president of St. Joseph College Seminary on the Loyola campus in Rogers Park, said there is nothing about the shrine to the tree trunk that runs contrary to what the church teaches.

If it draws people to God, fine.

Indeed, Cardinal Francis George said in the weeks after Catholics flocked to the underpass to pay homage to what they saw as the image of Mary: If it reminds people of the Holy Mother's care for her people, then that's "wonderful."

But, said Presta, "I think the church is cautious, too -- it may be helpful to some, but it might not be helpful to others."

The underpass image obviously was not helpful to Victor L. Gonzalez, of the 2700 block of North Menard, who was charged with misdemeanor criminal damage to state-supported property for writing the "Big Lie" graffiti over the image, police said. Authorities painted over the scrawl and the image, but several women scrubbed off the paint to reveal an altered image, believers say, of "Our Lady."

"What offends me is what that particular person wrote: 'Big Lie' " over the image in the underpass, Presta said. "Well, [big lie] to whom? What makes you think you know more the truth than someone else?"

A miracle in Cicero

At a near west suburban Cicero church, a handful of churchgoers on a recent Sunday bow before the icon of the Virgin Mary, now behind plexiglass, and pray for a child's health. It was in 1994, and again in recent weeks, that an oily, tearlike moisture streamed down the face of "Our Lady of Cicero" at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church.

Church authorities later ruled the weeping icon a miracle. The icon is a Byzantine rendering of Mary with an adult-looking Christ in her arms that evokes sadness. For many, the fact that the icon was one of the few things to survive a 1997 fire seemed to reinforce that this was a supernatural event.

"To me, she seems to be conveying in those tears sadness over what's happening today," St. George Archpriest Nicholas Dahdal said after a recent Sunday service. "I believe that she is telling us, 'I wept at the foot of the cross for my son, who died for your sins, and yet you have learned nothing.'"

Perhaps, he says, she is heartbroken by wars across the globe.

Maggie Barhoumeh, 14, of Morton Grove, and her 49-year-old mother, Denise, offer a prayer before the Virgin and what appears to be her tear-streaked face, and ask for her blessings.

It is well-known in the congregation that prayers have been answered, they say: Infertile couples have become pregnant. Cancer has been cured.

"But in order to be blessed, you have to believe," said Denise Marhoumeh.

Beyond the Cicero church, it's unclear whether any other religious organization's hierarchy has declared miracles at the sites of similar apparitions. For now, the Chicago Archdiocese is not investigating the sighting of the Virgin Mary on the Kennedy Expy. underpass as a miracle, a spokesman said.

Visit the outdoor shrines in Rogers Park, Joliet and even along the underpass, and what is clear from the handwritten Spanish messages praying for "familia" to the visitors themselves is that these places hold special meaning for Hispanics.

Hope for the future

Some say this goes back to the 16th century, when the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to Aztec peasant Juan Diego in Mexico. What she left behind was her own imprint on his cloak, an icon that remains in a Mexico City basilica.

History is part of it, some Latinos say, but others say they are offering a prayer of hope for the future.

A middle-aged mother and her adult daughter, from Venezuela, visited the Kennedy underpass in recent weeks. Isabel Avendano Di Lanzo, in Chicago for reconstructive surgery, and her mother were praying before the so-called apparition there for everything from Isabel's health to peace in their South American homeland.

"The Virgin Mary's image has manifested itself in places all over the world," Isabel said through a translator, "and that's her way to ask for us to pray together."

AREA SIGHTINGS

In the last 25 years, there have been nearly a dozen reported religious apparitions in the Chicago area, each one of them drawing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of believers. They include statues, paintings and icons that appear to weep or move, and images, shapes or shadows that appear on walls, windows and -- most recently -- the underpass wall of the Kennedy Expressway, at Fullerton.

Some of the best-known include:

# 2001: A scar on a tree trunk at Rogers Park was thought to be an image of Mary. The tree is gone, neighbors say, but the shrine still sits at Honore and Rogers where fresh flowers and lighted candles are evidence of its perpetual adoration.

# 1999: In Joliet, a shadowy outline of Mary is seen in the second-story window of a house at 611 Abe St.

# 1994: In Cicero, drops of moisture that look like tears stream down the cheeks of an icon of Mary at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, 1220 S. 60th Ct. The icon becomes famous as Our Lady of Cicero.

# 1991: At Queen of Heaven Cemetery, 1400 S. Wolf Rd. in Hillside, a retired railroad worker says he saw a large fiberglass crucifix bleed in the veterans section. So many people come to see the crucifix, some of them trampling over or driving on graves, that the cemetery has to move the crucifix and create a special parking lot for it. Today, the crowds are gone, but the icon still draws the faithful, a spokeswoman said.

# 1986: At Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Churchm 2701 N. Narragansett on Chicago's Northwest Side, a painting of Mary begins to weep on the saint's name day. The church opens its doors for veneration of the icon on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

# June 1984: At St. John of God Catholic Church on the Southwest Side, a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary appears to shed tears. The Archdiocese of Chicago investigates the phenomenon for more than a year before announcing it could not positively rule out natural causes for the liquid oozing from the wood.

Source: Sun-Times archives
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No BVM at MArpingen - so there you have it.

16.12.2005

Virgin Mary Gets an Excused Absence in Germany

It's now official: the Virgin Mary has never been to Germany. After a six-year investigation, a Catholic Church commission found no proof that supernatural events had taken place in the German town of Marpingen.

In 1876, three girls from Marpingen, a town in Saarland, now a southwestern German state, witnessed the appearance of the mother of God, while picking berries on a summer day. The Virgin Mary brought a message of peace and promised to come back "in times of distress."

More than a century later, she fulfilled her promise and returned -- no less than 13 times, according to witness accounts. After three women first spotted her on May 17, 1999, the news that the mother of God was hanging out in an obscure German town spread more quickly than a bushfire. Thousands of pilgrims descended upon Marpingen, and the town -- in the heat of religious fervor -- almost collapsed under the unexpected population influx.

When the Madonna was last seen in Marpingen in Oct. 1999, 35,000 pilgrims were there to bid her adieu. Some witnesses reported being surrounded by a wonderful and intense rose scent, others saw a path of glowing light descending from heaven and heard angelic music around them. Some saw the figure of the Virgin, full of grace, blessing the pilgrims, her veil standing motionless in the wind. Others saw absolutely nothing.

No definite proof

After six years of investigating the case, the Catholic Church announced on Wednesday that "there was justified doubt about the supernatural character of the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary." The special church commission did not go as far as proclaiming a pious fraud, but it also stopped short of explaining why the miraculous appearance of the mother of God could not be proven.

"The vote now says that we're not sure," said Reinhard Marx, Bishop of Trier, who lead the investigations.

The bishop encouraged believers to continue venerating the Virgin Mary at Marpingen, but stressed that miracles were not essential for those who believe.

"Not miracles, but the revelation of evangelism is the basis of faith," the bishop said.


Dissenting voices

Some believers, nonetheless, were hoping for a miracle. Father Jörg Müller, a therapist and author who also served as counselor to the Marpingen visionaries, analyzed the alleged apparitions and observed the three women in moments of religious ecstasy six years ago.

"Normally, the pupils contract when light is shone into them. Yet, in this case, the contractions are non-existent. Only after the apparition is over do the reflexes, such as blinking, return. One could not stage these by an act of will. That is out of the question," said Müller.

Having performed various psychological tests with the three visionaries, Müller also concluded that the women did not suffer from neurosis and were not involved in any kind of manipulation. He submitted his findings to the commission investigating the Marpingen apparitions, but the commission reached a different conclusion.

Better luck, next time

"We are satisfied with the decision," said Marpingen mayor Werner Laub on Wednesday, but stressed that the infrastructure in the region had to be reinforced to deal better with some 60,000 pilgrims who still visit the town each year.

Germans seem to be out of luck, as far as apparitions of the "Mother of God" are concerned. There has been over 170 recorded sightings of the Blessed Virgin on German soil, yet none of them have been officially sanctioned.

Many a German Catholic will be disappointed that the Madonna, who reportedly introduced herself as the "mother of Germany" and explicitly said she wanted to "regain Germany for heaven," has been given no official approval -- especially now that a German is, for the first time in five centuries, the infallible occupant of St. Peter's throne in the Vatican.


They may be able to find consolation in the fact that, with Angela Merkel as "chancelloress," Germany is lucky to have another -- increasingly confident, if overwhelmingly stern -- mother figure to lead the country in times of distress.
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www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1823196,00.html
 
Maine woman to protect Madonna image

By Associated Press

MEXICO, Maine - A Maine woman who discovered an image of the Virgin Mary on a blackened wall following a weekend house fire says she plans to rebuild the dwelling and cut out the image so she can put it on display.

The image was declared off-limits to visitors after Veronica Dennis followed her insurance company's instruction to board up the house out of concern for the safety of people entering the fire-damaged structure.

Dennis' home caught fire Sunday morning after a space heater in her daughter's bedroom ignited a bed and a nearby dog bed. The image was revealed when she removed a framed painting from the kitchen wall, which was blackened by smoke and fire.

Dennis expressed concern that visitors looking to view the Virgin Mary image could turn her home "into a three-ring circus" and she was adamant that she has no intention of selling the property she has owned for 11 years.

"This is my house," she said. "My neighbors wouldn't appreciate it either if I sold the house and they turned it into a shrine. I will rebuild the interior, and, the image that's on the wall is on paneling, so I will cut it out, and it will remain in the house," she said.

Police and neighbors who have been keeping watch on the Burton Street home said they saw no unusual activity after news of the image spread through the media, including The Associated Press, which transmitted a Sun Journal newspaper photo around the world.

"This neighborhood's good at watching, and, I told (Dennis) I would keep an eye on the place," said Marlene Gile, who lives next door.

Gile said viewing the image led her to believe that it could be message from a higher being.

"I just believe that God's letting her know that she's not alone. It means things will get better, and, like I told her, things will get better," Gile said.
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www.seacoastonline.com/news/special/1_19special3.htm
 
Not seeing, but believing

Though others are skeptical, many Chicago-area Catholics feel the presence of the Virgin Mary in the vision of a man who first saw her in 1981

By John Biemer
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 22, 2006

When the ordinary looking man in the black suit rose from the first pew, approached the altar and kneeled, the packed Aurora church fell silent but for the clicking of rosary beads.

The man crossed himself. He whispered and nodded repeatedly. After less than 10 minutes, he crossed himself twice more and returned to his pew.

During that time, Ivan Dragicevic later explained, the Virgin Mary appeared to him, as she has every day for almost 25 years, always at 6:40 p.m., always during a recitation of the rosary, no matter where he is.

There was first a bright light, and she floated on a small cloud, he told the congregation. She had a beautiful dress, a white veil, blue eyes, rosy cheeks, dark hair and a crown of stars.

"`Praised be Jesus, my dear children,'" he quoted her as saying. "And after that, she extends her hand and prays over all of us, and she especially prays over all of those who are sick. And then she blesses us."

The congregation at Holy Angels Catholic Church saw nothing. They heard nothing. Yet they believed.

"The fact that he had an apparition up there kind of brought me to tears," said Jean DeLuca, 75, of Warrenville.

"It was very inspiring," said Dick Rowe, 81, of Aurora. "Words can't express it."

Nearly a quarter-century has passed since a group of children reported being startled by a vision of the mother of Jesus Christ in the rugged hills of Medjugorje, an ethnically Croatian village in rural Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Although the Vatican has not pronounced whether the visions are authentic--and some Catholics are skeptical--the site has become a destination for millions of pilgrims from around the world.

Real or not, the Medjugorje apparitions are remarkably persistent, continuing through the fall of communism in the former Yugoslavia and a war that claimed 200,000 lives. Of the four girls and two boys who first saw the vision, three say they continue to see Mary every day, the others just once a year.

Dragicevic, a 16-year-old student working in his family's fields when he first reported seeing the Virgin, has become a kind of ambassador for the message of peace and prayer he receives, touring churches around the world. He has visited five in the Chicago area in the last week and Sunday will be at Our Lady of Lourdes in Chicago.

Now 40, he is married to Laureen Murphy, a former Miss Massachusetts, with whom he is raising their three young children near Boston. He spends summers in Medjugorje, where his family runs a bed and breakfast.

Standing at the front of the Aurora church last week, Dragicevic told the rapt congregation that he did not wish for them to look at him "as perfect or holy," but as a shy and introverted man who wonders why he was chosen to be "her instrument."

"One question that I always ask myself every day throughout those 25 years," he said through a translator, "that question is, `Mother, why me? Wasn't there somebody better than me? Mother, will I be able to execute everything you ask of me? Are you satisfied with me?'"

One day, he said, he asked her directly: Why me? "She gave me a short smile, and she said, `Dear child, I don't always look for the best,'" he said.

Many Chicago-area Catholics first heard of Medjugorje in the 1980s, when thousands were packing into the Rosemont Horizon to discuss Mary's messages to the children at Marian conferences and pilgrims were signing up for package tours to Yugoslavia.

The tiny town adapted to the crowds. Priests by the dozen heard confessions in a wide range of languages. Restaurants and stores selling religious trinkets popped up along the main drag. Pilgrims--often barefoot--climbed rocky paths to the hilly site where Mary allegedly first appeared. They claimed to witness miracles such as the sun spinning in the sky, rosaries turned to gold and unexplainable healings.

All the while, the Vatican maintained a "wait and see" posture that likely will hold until after the visions cease and the Holy See can conduct a thorough investigation of the visionaries and the messages they received, said Mary FioRito, Cardinal Francis George's executive assistant.

The Vatican is cautious about declaring private revelations to be authentic, vetting them to make sure they're not hoaxes, the result of psychological conditions or even demonic powers intended to mislead. Publicity for one case can lead to fake copycats.

-----
Although the church remains neutral, FioRito said, she knows many people whose pilgrimages inspired them to practice their faith more avidly--praying, taking the sacraments and even receiving religious vocations.

"It was very beautiful, the whole village is just so spiritual and so at peace, you just don't want to leave," said Marie Fallon, 63, of Barrington, who visited last year and helped arrange for Dragicevic to visit Holy Family Parish in Inverness.

The simple Medjugorje message--emphasizing prayer, fasting, reading the Bible, going to confession and receiving the Eucharist--continues to have wide appeal, said Mary Frohlich, a professor of spirituality at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

The idea of a tender, motherly voice speaking for God is comforting to many, she said. That dovetails with the contemporary desire to see evidence of a God active in our lives, manifested in the popularity of angels and even visions of Mary in a salt and water stain on a Chicago underpass.

"Despite in many ways being a very secular society, there's that longing for the direct, immediate concrete intervention of God," Frohlich said.

That prospect drew a northwest suburban woman named Colleen Willard to make the trip to Medjugorje in 2003. At the time, Willard said, she was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor and acute fibromyalgia, a musculoskeletal pain and fatigue syndrome.

She was not looking for a miracle, she said, but rather to pray for family members whom she expected to leave behind. Once there, one of the six visionaries, Vicka Ivankovic-Mijatovic, prayed over her.

"I felt this intense heat going on," said Willard, 54. "There was such an awareness of the presence of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit that if he'd have taken me then, I'd have gone happily."

Instead, she felt the heat lift after she received Communion at mass. She stood up from her wheelchair and later climbed the apparition hill. Her ailments, she said, are gone.

"God has chosen a very special place there for all mankind," she said.

Others believe something else is going on in Medjugorje.

E. Michael Jones, the South Bend-based author of "The Medjugorje Deception: Queen of Peace, Ethnic Cleansing and Ruined Lives," calls it one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th Century.

The visions of Mary were orchestrated by Franciscan priests in the town parish, St. James, because the local diocese did not want to give them jurisdiction over certain parishes, Jones argues. Local bishops have declared the apparitions to be inauthentic.

Then Medjugorje got caught up in geopolitics.

It was a time of flux in 1981 in Yugoslavia. Tito, the communist strongman who was able to hold together the country's ethnic groups for decades, had died a year earlier. The visions provided fuel for anti-communism movements as well as Croatian nationalism that flared up in the 1990s war.

The tourism industry, Jones said, also has become a cash cow. "You had basically a whole series of intersecting circles here," said Jones, a Catholic who said he does believe that the Virgin's 1917 appearances in Fatima, Portugal, were authentic.

His Croatian heritage and love of Mary led Rev. Philip Pavich, a Franciscan priest and native Iowan, to request a transfer to St. James parish. For 13 years, he ministered to English-speaking pilgrims there and heard confessions as many as six hours per day.

But a few years after arriving, he came to the conclusion that the visions were not the Virgin. For one, the seers were disobeying church commands, including the bishop's request that they not receive their apparitions in St. James. He also decided that the messages they were relaying contained "classic New Age jargon" inconsistent with Catholic doctrine.

"If anyone wanted to believe it, I did," said Pavich, now stationed at the Croatian Franciscan Custody in Hyde Park. "I changed my life upside down to go there. So it ended up a big disappointment to me."

The faithful may have powerful religious experiences in Medjugorje, he said, but "they lose all sense of critical judgement because they're anesthetized by some nice feeling. I think they're bound by a guilt ... that they cannot declare this to be inauthentic because they feel like they're denying the grace that they received."

And those spinning suns? "That's a light show on your retina," he said.

Dragicevic answers doubters simply: He says he'll pray for them. Most people he meets do believe, he said.

"Before I came, I was hemming and hawing, hemming and hawing. Should I go? Should I go?" Marianne Faraone, 33, of Elmwood Park, said last week. "And after going, I feel a complete peace. I don't even know how to describe it. She was actually there with us in the room."

"Her message is very simple, and I don't know if people came here expecting to see fireworks," said Vickie Mazur, 60, of Roselle. "But that's not what it is. It's the peace and the love that came through."

The Virgin Mary's remedy for a "spiritually dying" world, Dragicevic explains, is indeed simple.

"Every mother has to repeat herself, and every mother teaches," he said. "A mother has to repeat herself so the children will not forget."

"`Don't talk about peace, but begin to live peace,'" he quoted her as saying. "`Don't talk about prayer but begin to live prayer.' Many times she has repeated the words: pray, pray, pray."

----------------
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
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Source
 
From miracle to mystery

The tears on Virgin Mary statue are gone, but the wonder - and questions - remain

By Jennifer Garza -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, January 28, 2006
Story appeared in Scene section, Page K1

The Virgin Mary is no longer weeping.

The mysterious stains that some believed were tears of blood on a statue of the Virgin Mary at a Rancho Cordova church were washed away by storms.

The marks on the left cheek are gone and so are the crowds. The only sign that anything unusual happened at the Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church are the three dozen flowers, the assortment of candles and the brown folding chairs placed in front of the statue.

"It disappeared as quickly as it appeared," says the Rev. Jude Ban Nguyen, pastor of the church on the outskirts of Sacramento.

The so-called tears of blood, which first appeared Nov. 9, attracted worldwide attention. Media from as far away as London and Ho Chi Minh City called the church. Believers posted what they thought the tears meant on Catholic Web sites. Worshippers from all over came to pray and sing in front of the statue.

After the streaks appeared, a priest wiped them away. When it reappeared on Nov. 20, believers saw it as a sign from above. Nguyen says the streaks disappeared with the New Year's rains.

The marks may be gone, but questions about what exactly happened to the statue remain.

"I don't know if it was God, or man-made," said Nguyen, of the marks on the face of the statue. "I don't know."

The Catholic Diocese of Sacramento did not investigate the stain.

Nguyen does not know if it was a hoax but he denies rumors that the church made money from the publicity.

"It's not true. ... We have a sign in the parking lot that says, 'Don't take any donations,' " he says.

A church in Australia last year was investigated after allegations of fraud following reports of a weeping statue. No wrongdoing by the church was found, but the investigation noted that the church saw a jump of $41,000 in donations and sales of religious items.

"We saw no increase here," said Nguyen of Vietnamese Catholic Martyrs Church.

About two dozen worshippers still visit the humble church on Jackson Road daily, some coming as soon as the gate to the parking lot opens in the morning. Some come before work, others on their lunch breaks. They quietly take their seats facing the white statue. Several say they keep coming back because "it feels special here."

Dave Brown of Elk Grove has visited the site several times over the past two months.

"I believe that she has given us a message," says Brown, who also visited the shrine at Lourdes, France, last summer. "To me, it's a miracle."

Brown knows there are skeptics. "I've had people laugh at me or criticize me," he says. "But that's OK; that doesn't affect my faith."

He adds that the visitors are not praying to the statue, but rather what it represents.

To some such as Brown, the disappearance of the stain doesn't change the belief that something miraculous happened.

"It doesn't matter to me at all," says John Gullett, who traveled from Stockton with his wife, Amanda, to see the statue this week. The couple have a statue of the Virgin Mary in their backyard. They said they were too busy during the holidays to visit the church sooner but are not disappointed that the streaks disappeared.

"I cried yesterday and my tears may be gone now," Gullett says. "That doesn't mean I didn't cry."

His wife agrees, adding that's why people make pilgrimages to places such as Fatima, Portugal, every year. "We didn't have to see it to know that it happened," says Amanda Gullett. "That's faith."

Shirley DeFazio of the Rosemont area has visited the small church several times. "I'm waiting for her to send us another sign," DeFazio says.

Others have their doubts about the streaks.

"I think kids did it," says Tim Phan, a member of the church. Phan took several photos of the statue with the stains, "and it didn't look real."

But he adds that he has been inspired by the faith of the people who believe. "It's real for them."
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www.sacbee.com/content/lifestyle/story/ ... 0038c.html
 
Posted on Thu, Feb. 09, 2006

Holy Chip! Local woman sees Mary

TIM W. McCANN
Herald Staff Writer

PALMETTO - Elizabeth Gould said a strange sensation overwhelmed her while she was eating from a bag of potato chips during a flight from New York to Florida.

She paused, stopped eating and looked at the potato chip in her hand.

It looked familiar. The chip bears the image of the Virgin Mary, Gould said, and passengers on the flight agreed.

She spread out the remainder of the chips on her tray, but none looked like anything more than, well, a potato chip. So she wrapped the roughly quarter-sized chip in a napkin, tucked it in the bag and held on to it.

A friend she showed the chip to said it looks kind of like a painting of the blue Madonna displayed at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. Gould brought the chip to The Herald recently along with the other remaining chips, still in the original bag.

The chip does have an image of a head and partial body. The head is slightly tilted and the shape is surrounded by a white substance, resembling a robe of sorts.

Some of the other chips have traces of the white, but not as pronounced as the "holy" chip.

"When I saw this," Gould said, "I felt like she was looking at me."

Gould, a Palmetto resident, flew JetBlue Airways to New York over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend to visit her sister, she said. She got the bag of Terra Blue chips from a passenger sitting next to her. The Terra Blue chips are the official chips of JetBlue Airways, according to Terra Blue and JetBlue Web sites.

While touring New York City, Gould said an indescribable feeling swept over her as she neared the remains of the World Trade Center towers. She said she encountered the same feeling while on the plane eating JetBlue's complimentary bag of blue-colored potato chips.

"That's what made me look at the potato chip," she said, "I think my words were, 'This looks like the Virgin Mary!' "

This isn't the first story of claims of holy images appearing on food and other items, according to the Web site en.wikipedia.org.

Some recent reports include a Nebraska couple claiming to have found a pretzel bearing the image of Mary holding baby Jesus. Mary's image again appeared on an emergency turnoff underneath Chicago's Kennedy Expressway. Both occurred in 2005.

Probably the most famous case happened about two years ago. GoldenPalace.com, an online casino, paid $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich bearing an image that resembled Mary.

When asked, Gould said she would consider putting the chip up for sale on eBay.

Religious icons have also shown up closer to home.

In May 2000, The Herald covered a story about an image resembling Jesus appearing on the wall of the Palma Sola Presbyterian Church in Bradenton after a pressure wash. The image appeared whenever the wall got wet and continued to draw crowds for most of the year.

In 1996, an image that some described as Mary appeared on the side of a mirrored office building in Clearwater. The image was partially damaged in 2004 when a teenager shot out parts of the glass with a slingshot, according to The St. Petersburg Times.
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www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/13825899.htm
 
Curia confirms human blood on statue of Virgin Mary

By MaltaMedia News
Apr 21, 2006, 12:42 CET


The Archbishop’s Curia has confirmed that human blood was oozing from the eyes of the statue of the Virgin Mary in a private residence in the last few weeks.

A spokesman for the Curia said in a statement that the first report was examined by the Church Authorities and it transpired that the red liquid was human blood.

The same phenomenon was reported a few weeks later and this second incident is still being investigated, the spokesman said.

Local newspaper In-Nazzjon on Friday revealed that the statue is in a private residence in Birzebbugia.

The owner of the statue of the Immaculate Conception reported the weeping of the red liquid to the parish priest on Monday. The latter advised the owner to report to the Curia.

------------
© Copyright 2006 - MaltaMedia Online Network
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www.maltamedia.com/news/2005/ln/article_9726.shtml
 
Woman Tries to Sell Image of Virgin Mary

It looks more like a canary to me.

mary.jpg


Slightly more detailed version of the tale here.
 
That's not the Virgin Mary, that's Godzilla.
 
Sweet Mary, mother of God?
Workers at candy company see form of Virgin Mary in chocolate

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, California (AP) -- Workers at a chocolate company have discovered a 2-inch-tall (5-centimeter-tall) column of chocolate drippings that they believe bears a striking resemblance to traditional depictions of the Virgin Mary.

Since the discovery of the drippings under a vat on Monday, employees of Bodega Chocolates have spent much of their time hovering over the tiny figure, praying and placing rose petals and candles around it.

"I was raised to believe in the Virgin Mary, but this still gives me the chills," company co-owner Martucci Angiano said as she balanced the dark brown figure in her hand during an interview Thursday. "Everyone should see this."

Kitchen worker Cruz Jacinto was the first to spot the lump of melted chocolate when she began her shift Monday cleaning up drippings that had accumulated under a large vat of dark chocolate.

Chocolate drippings usually harden in thin, flat strips on wax paper. But Jacinto said she froze when she noticed the unusual shape of this cast-off: It looked just like the Virgin Mary on the prayer card she always carries in her right pocket.

"When I come in, the first thing I do is look at the clock, but this time I didn't look at the clock. My eyes went directly to the chocolate," said Jacinto, wearing a hair net and apron as she paused from her work. "I thought, 'Am I the only one who can see this? I picked it up and I felt emotion just come over me. For me, it was a sign."

The chocolate, on display for most of the week in the front of the company gift shop, now rests in a plastic case in a back room and is brought out only for curious visitors.

The stack of hardened confection has a wide base and tapers gently toward a rounded top, giving the appearance of a female figure with her head tilted slightly to the right. The dark brown melting chocolate hardened into subtle layers that resemble the folds of a gown and a flowing veil.

A tiny white circle, about the size of a pencil eraser, sits in the upper center of the creation, just above a slight ridge that runs across it. Jacinto says the white speck is the head of the Baby Jesus as he is held in Mary's folded arms.

For Jacinto, the discovery came just in time. The single mother said she has struggled with personal problems for months and says she was about to lose her faith.

"I have big problems right now, personally, and lately I've been saying that God doesn't exist," she said, pulling the dog-eared prayer card out of her pocket. "This has given me renewed faith."

Angiano, who co-owns the 10-year-old company with her sister, has rubbed shoulders with plenty of stars in her job.

The gourmet boutique runs booths at all the big awards shows, including the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Oscars, the Country Music Awards and the Latin Grammys. Pictures of Angiano with top celebrities -- and her chocolates -- line the office walls.

But this week's brush with the iconic image has left even Angiano star-struck.

"That's our Oscar right there," she said.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/17/chocol ... index.html
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If I was the Virgin Mary I think I'd be very unflattered at the various things people compared me to.
 
I'm so tickled I get to post a story from my home town before one of you frantic foreign newshounds scoops me! I wish it were something more exciting than yet another weeping virgin, but beggars can't be choosers. Here's the story as found online so far:

Some were calling it a miracle, a statue of the Virgin Mary here in San Antonio appeared to be crying Wednesday, and dozens of believers were stopping by to see it.
The statue is at the store A&J Toys and Novelties on Colorado St. on the west side. People were crowding the store Wednesday night to get a peek.

“This is the first time I've ever seen anything like that,” one man said.

Water was seen coming from the statue’s eyes.

“I pass by here every day, and it's just a miracle that it's happening so close to where we live,” neighbor Delia Ramirez said.

Believers were emotional calling the statue a true blessing from above.

The store’s owner, Amelia Gutierrez, got the statue from Mexico on Sunday, and planned to put it in a raffle. But Wednesday morning, she said tears started pouring out.

“I don't know if she's trying to tell us something,” Gutierrez said. “We just have to pray, I guess.”
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The story on the 9:00 TV news was a little fuller and had the virtue of showing the statue. It appears to be painted plaster, about three feet tall. Its most striking feature was the "real" eyelashes, which were thick and long, but clumped and disarranged by the water running out of the eyes. The plan to raffle it off has been cancelled (but think of the cash you'd make! Better than lotto tickets!). Although the reporter said that the news team examined the back of the statue and it appeared to be solid, the back was not shown, and what struck me was that it was standing on a counter in front of a large display cooler. No cures have been claimed, but a grandma has already brought in her grandson, who is in remission from leukemia, to touch it.

The area in question is just across the highway west and a little north from downtown in an area of mixed industrial and residential uses, part of the traditionally Hispanic "West Side." (The "miracle tree" last year was on the traditionally black East Side, again just outside of downtown in a low-rent residential and commercial district.) A&J Imported Toys and Novelties is listed in the yellow pages under "Toys - Wholesale and Manufacturing." Because of the cooler, I first thought - with some delight, as it would be too wonderfully tacky and mundane for words - that the store was an ice house or convenience store, but a wholesale supplier of gimcrack carnival prizes and souvenirs will do. It's a little less boring than a church or private home.
 
Jesus(or other Religious figure) appears in........

I'm sure there must be a thread for Religious similacra, but I can't find it. So, mods, if you point me in the direction, I got a few of these. Here's the freshest:

California Man Believes He Sees Virgin Mary In Wound 5/7/2008

"MONTEREY, CA (NBC) -- A California man says he can see the image of the Virgin Mary in his leg after a motorcycle accident.

Marc Lipton said he was riding his motorcycle when he lost control and slid about 50 feet along the road.

Lipton said he wasn't wearing leather chaps at the time because he was close to home.

Lipton said he believes the Virgin Mary protected him from further injury when the motorcycle slid out from underneath him.

The Roman Catholic Church has very strict guidelines regarding what is deemed an official sighting of the Virgin Mary.

There has been no word on if the Diocese of Monterey will investigate Lipton's leg as a legitimate apparition of the Virgin Mary.

Article & pic here:
http://www.wlbz2.com/news/watercooler/a ... ryid=86461
 
Virgin Mary spotted in suburban tree trunk

The image, which resembles the mother of Jesus in her traditional open-armed pose, has reportedly been causing local residents to shake and cry in wonder.

Christopher Moreau, who first spotted the tree’s markings in his neighbour’s garden in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, believes that it may have helped the health of his mother-in-law, who recently recovered from cancer.

"At first I thought I was seeing things," the 47-year-old said. "Then I went and got my mother-in-law to tell her. She was overwhelmed by it. She was crying."

"I don't know why it's there, but I think it's a blessing," he told the Toronto Star newspaper, adding that he hoped it would help others looking for a miracle.

"She's not there just for me. She's there to share."

Eulalee Hamilton, Mr Moreau’s neighbour and the owner of the tree, said that she was happy for people to come see the likeness as long as they did not damage her garden.

Laughing off suggestions that it was a sign from God, she said that the Virgin Mary image was just the scarring from a limb that was cut off the tree a year ago.

"Chris can have all the people he wants on his back deck but I don't really want people trampling on my garden," she said.

Mr Moreau has admitted he was drinking in his garden when he first spotted the likeness, but insists he was completely sober. "I'm not a wacko," he said.

"It raises the hair on your neck, it gives you chills," he added.

A spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto said that it does not investigate the veracity of such “appearances”.

There have been hundreds of "sightings" of the Virgin Mary down the centuries, but recent years have seen her appearing in ever more unusual places.

A decade-old toasted cheese sandwich said to bear her image was sold on eBay $28,000 in 2004.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2632686/Virgin-Mary-spotted-in-suburban-tree-trunk.html

maximus otter
 
Right, I am not a Christian but have read various religious texts out of interest. I know that the image of the Devil is not described anywhere i the Bible, except for when he manifests as a snake in the Garden of Eden (I may be wrong). Are Jesus and Mary accurately physically described anywhere in the Bible? How do we know what they are supposed to look like? Maybe these simulacra aren't of the Virgin and Christ, but a more earth bound form of ghosts of far more normal people? I mean, surely Jesus would have been Asian?
 
celticrose said:
I mean, surely Jesus would have been Asian?
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Half-Asian. And as for what he looked like, I guess that depends on whether he took after his dad or not.
 
celticrose said:
Right, I am not a Christian but have read various religious texts out of interest. I know that the image of the Devil is not described anywhere i the Bible, except for when he manifests as a snake in the Garden of Eden (I may be wrong).
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Wasn't the snake in Genesis originally just that, a snake? It was only centuries later that it began to be identified with Satan although there was nothing to connect the two in the first place.
 
I dunno, its beena few years since I read a bible.

So Mary was caucasian?
 
There is no physical description of Jesus/Joseph/Mary in the Bible save for a rough estimation of ages.

I suppose this is partly due to the nature of Christianity as a catholic religion (small 'c'). The gospel writers may have purposefuly avoided giving any description of Jesus so that He (and therefore His message) would be accepted more widely.

The church has never had an 'official' image of Jesus and was quite content for different communities to imagine Jesus in their own way. For example the Roman catacombs often depict Jesus as a roman shepherd or teacher, white skinned, short curly hair and wearing a toga. It's possible that the influence of Roman Christianity helped exert this 'white jesus' across Europe, not out of any plan or racial politics, just as a matter of course.

In fact, racial theory regarding the colour of Jesus is fairly recent, only from about the 19th Century onwards has 'race' - as such come into the argument.
 
gncxx said:
Wasn't the snake in Genesis originally just that, a snake? It was only centuries later that it began to be identified with Satan although there was nothing to connect the two in the first place.
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If I understand correctly, it was originally a serpent, also referred to as a lizard or dragon. Its punishment for the temptation of Eve was to crawl on its belly i.e. to become a snake. I think the connection with Satan is inferred from other biblical passages, not from the temptation story itself.
 
Nothing to see here, move along now please.

Pope urges crackdown on reported visions of Mary
Richard Owen in Rome

The Pope has instructed Vatican officials to adopt stricter criteria for the approval of visions of Mary.

As Pope Benedict XVI began his first visit as pontiff to France, being greeted at Paris airport by President Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, it emerged that he had asked a Spanish Jesuit to draw up new guidelines for bishops around the world on the recognition of reported apparitions.

The Vatican said it had asked Monsignor Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer to launch his investigation because the Pope wanted to avoid "excesses and abuses" of such visions. The pontiff believes bishops should resist being swayed by the emotional reaction of believers and be guided instead by strictly applied "scientific, psychological and theological criteria".

Ignazio Ingrao, Vatican correspondent of the weekly news magazine Panorama, said the inquiry had been prompted because of the readiness of a bishop of Civitavecchia, the port north of Rome, to approve reports that a statue of the Madonna owned by a local family had wept tears of blood. The bishop even claimed to have seen the tears himself while holding the statue in his arms. The bishop was later replaced.

The Vatican is also sceptical about reported Marian apparitions since 1981 at Medjugorge in Bosnia-Herzegovina, despite the fact that the site is visited by two million pilgrims a year.

Vittorio Messori, an Italian Catholic writer who is close to the Pope, said the then Cardinal Ratzinger had told him in 1985 that "patrience and caution" were the key to validating Marian visions. "No apparition is indispensable to the faith" the future Pope told Messori. "The Revelation ended with Jesus Christ".

Guidelines for the approval of apparitions and revelations were last issued in 1978. They lay down that a diocesan bishop can "either on his own initiative or at the request of the faithful" choose to investigate an alleged apparition. He then submits a report to the Vatican for approval.

The news came as the Pope visited France and prepared to hold talks with Mr Sarkozy as well as visiting a religious shrine at Lourdes. France is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic - at least nominally - but also has large Muslim and Jewish communities and adheres to the separation of church and state. Mr Sarkozy is himself a lapsed Catholic who has been divorced twice. While in the country, Benedict is to deliver a keynote address on the role of religion in society to the French Academy, of which he has been a member since 1992.

Before leaving Rome on his trip, Benedict, who speaks fluent French, said he would pray at the feet of Our Lady of Lourdes for the Church, the "sick and abandoned", and peace in the world.

"I go as a messenger of peace and fraternity," he said in a message to the French people. "Your country is not unknown to me. On several occasions I have had the joy to visit it and to appreciate its generous tradition of hospitality and tolerance, as well as the solidity of its Christian faith and its lofty human and spiritual culture."

He added: "May Mary be for all of you, and in particular for young people, a Mother always attentive to the needs of her children, a light of hope that illuminates and guides your ways."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 739281.ece
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