Debunking The Myth Of The Weeping Statue Mary

By Sandra Perry


Many urban legends have stemmed out about the crying statue of mother Mary. A lot of people would say that it is the work of some sort of supernatural force while the Catholic church would call it a miracle on earth. Despite all of this though, it is very interesting to look into the overall story of the weeping statue mary to know whether this is fact or fiction.

While there have been many reported cases of crying statues for many years. However, one of the earliest documented case was sometime in the early fifties in a church in Sicily. It is a relic of the holy Virgin Mother inside a church in Siracusa wherein the relic was seen to have started crying exactly in 1953.

Many onlookers captured the act on camera and spread the news. This resulted in a lot of controversies wherein people were saying it was a hoax. Followers, on the other hand, were quick to say that there was a message from Heaven or some sort of divine intervention that was being shown.

Following that, there have been a string of incidences regarding this type of phenomenon years to come. One of the more popular ones was the incident of the Inala Vietnamese Catholic Centre which happened in 2004. The incident involved a Mother Mary figure crying out blood and leaking scented oil. This also became a big issue with the church that the Archbishop started an investigation.

As expected though, many people have been trying to find a logical explanation for this. One of which was made by Dr Luigi Garlaschelli from the University of Pavia. In order to find the logical cause, he tried making his own holy mother figure and tried to make it weep without any electronic gadget or external help.

What he did is he created a figure made out of thin plaster which was coated with impermeable glazing. According to Garlaschelli, the material absorbs moisture except when there are scratches or holes in the thin plaster. If ever the plaster in the eyes have scratches, then the moisture that was absorbed would seep out of the eyes giving the illusion that the statue is crying.

As for the one in the Brisbane church, the Archbishop Bathersby already concluded that it was not a miracle made by the supernatural but rather, were man made. First, he concluded that the scented oil was a scented oil that could be bought in any store and applied by someone on said figure. He also concluded that the red substance was not blood. Finally, his team also discovered that there were small holes in the eyes in which liquids could be injected.

While the Brisbane incident was pretty much proven to be a hoax, the Sicily incident was never concluded by Garlaschelli. The original crying holy mother was already locked away in the church and was not to be touch by anyone except staffed authorized. With that, Garlaschelli could only give a possible scientific explanation for the phenomenon but not a concrete one since he could never examine the actual figure.




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