Liquid on Civitavecchia statue 'salty', bishop says (ANSA) - Rome, March 31 - A copy of a famed 'weeping Madonna' that draws crowds of tourists to a shrine north of Rome has started weeping itself, the local bishop told reporters on Friday .
The original statue of the Madonna of Medjugorie, a shrine in Croatia, caused a sensation in 1995 when tears of blood were found on it .
It was impounded by the police during an investigation and replaced by a copy donated by a Croatian bishop .
After an investigation led by local bishop Monsignor Girolamo Grillo, the "inexplicable" nature of the event was announced and a shrine set up to the original Madonna in a local church .
It soon became a magnet for pilgrims and a boon for the makers of statuettes and other religious knick-knacks .
The owner, a local man called Fabio Gregori, put the replacement statue in his garden .
Now, just two days before the anniversary of Pope John Paul II's death, he claims the second statue has started weeping - not blood this time, but salty tears .
Gregori's fresh claim was corroborated by Msgr Grillo on Friday, who said: ""They look like real tears. I put some in my mouth and they tasted of water and salt", the prelate said .
"Gregori told me it also cried when the pope died" .
An organisation set up to protect people from tricksters and conmen, Telefono Antiplagio, immediately filed a suit at the Civitavecchia prosecutors' office to establish if there is anything fishy in the new bout of weeping .
It stressed that, after Grillo's panel ruled on the alleged miracle, a later Vatican commission led by a senior cardinal, Camillo Ruini concluded that there was "nothing supernatural in the event." It also recalled that Gregori, the owner of the original statue, refused to take a DNA test .
The blood on the statue was found to be male .
The fresh case came just a week after police in the Romagna city of Forli' opened a probe into a Madonna found with 'tears' of blood in a church. The news of a possible miracle in Forli' was reported to the local bishop who immediately removed the figure, replacing it with a similar one, and called the police .
The Madonna has not wept since it was moved to the bishop's offices .
The number of reported cases of Madonna appearances and of statues moving or weeping has grown in recent years and the Vatican has become even more cautious about giving its seal of approval .
In the wake of the Madonna of Civitavecchia case in February 1995, dozens of statues were reported to be weeping all over the country .
Practically all were shown to be copycat cases of people splashing red paint on the cheeks of statues or surreptitiously throwing water on their faces .
Last September the Catholic Church said that tears of blood found on a statue of Saint (Padre) Pio in the southern Italian town of Marsicovetere were not a miraculous act of God .
All this is a far cry from the 1950s when a 'weeping' Madonna in a Sicilian house was deemed a miracle .
Pope John Paul II consecrated a shrine devoted to her in 1994 .
Source: http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/eng ... 15520.html
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