Catholics in the town of Viacha are working to have this image recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the smallest statue of the Virgin Mary to be venerated at an altitude of 4,200 meters.

The statue dates back to the 17th century and is associated with three Marian apparitions on the "Cerro de las Letanías" ("Mountain of Litanies") from that time. Among other things, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a little girl and saved her from being attacked by a snake. As a result, an image of the Virgin Mary was found engraved in a small stone. The small statue is adorned with precious robes that only women can wear. She is considered miraculous and is invoked for rain in times of drought. She is also said to bring about harmony between the indigenous population and the Catholic faith. Read more

"I'm not against the pope, but what's needed is mutual respect," Cardia said. "They need to stop saying nonsense about me and try to understand better."

Undeterred by her local bishop's declaration in March that the events were not supernatural, Cardia remains steadfast. She continues to organise monthly gatherings of devotees, who fervently pray in front of the image of the Virgin, eagerly awaiting her latest revelations.

Cardia, a resident of Trevignano, a small town roughly 45 minutes north of Rome, has a unique past. She used to work as a ceramics salesperson and was once given a two-year suspended jail sentence on charges of fraud related to the bankruptcy of her ceramics company.

Six years ago, she and her husband visited Medjugorje, a famous site of an alleged Marian apparition. She claimed to have brought a small statue of the Virgin Mary with her, which later started to shed tears of blood.

Last year, a private investigator announced that analysis of the tears revealed that the tears contained pigs' blood. Read more

After reports of the incident surfaced, hundreds of curious believers and sceptics flocked to witness the event.

Video footage shared on social media showed what appeared to be small, transparent drops falling from the eyes and down her face.

Some people associate the phenomenon with the violence rates that are being experienced in the state of Colima. As of October of this year, 702 confirmed intentional homicides had been recorded by the Colima Prosecutor's Office. Read more

The apparition appeared in the clouds in the shape of Our Lady, but unlike the other clouds, it retained its form for some time. It also glowed more brightly than the other clouds. Look at the video

Servite Father Salvatore Perrella, president of the Pontifical Institute Marianum and a member of the commission now-retired Pope Benedict XVI established to study the Medjugorje case, said that although Pope Francis has not yet made a formal pronouncement on the presumed apparitions, "he thought it was a good idea to clear some of the fog."

The pope's remarks to journalists on May 13 on his flight from Portugal to Rome "were a surprise, but he told the truth," Father Perrella told Catholic News Service on May 18.

"For four years, the commission established by Pope Benedict investigated, interrogated, listened, studied and debated this phenomenon of the presumed apparitions of Mary" in a small town in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

"The commission did not make a definitive pronouncement," he said, but in discussing the apparitions that supposedly began June 24, 1981, and continue today, the commission opted to distinguish between what occurred in the first 10 days and what has occurred in the following three decades.

"The commission held as credible the first apparitions," he said. "Afterward, things became a little more complicated."

As a member of the papal commission, Father Perrella said he could not discuss specifics that had not already been revealed by Pope Francis to the media.

But he did not object to the suggestion that one of the complicating factors was the tension existing at the parish in Medjugorje between the Franciscans assigned there and the local bishop.

In some of the alleged messages, Mary sided with the Franciscans. Continue reading

Sources

• America article by Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
• Image: National Geographic

Mary appeared there six times, once a month from May through October.

Most people know about the Miracle of the Sun during that October 13 apparition that was witnessed by at least 70,000 people.

But are other little-known or forgotten facts connected with the Fatima apparitions . Read more

In a small Roman Catholic chapel in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the village of Medjugorje, Ivan Dragicevic walks down the aisle, kneels in front of the altar, bows his head for a moment, and then, smiling, lifts his gaze heavenward.

He begins to whisper, listens intently, whispers again, and doesn't blink for ten minutes. His daily conversation with the Virgin Mary has begun.

Dragicevic was one of six poor shepherd children who first reported visions of the Virgin Mary in 1981. She identified herself to the four girls and two boys as the "Queen of Peace" and handed down the first of thousands of messages admonishing the faithful to pray more often and asking sinners to repent.

Dragicevic was 16 years old, and Medjugorje, then in communist-controlled Yugoslavia, had yet to emerge as a hub of miracle cures and spiritual conversions, attracting 30 million pilgrims during the past three decades.

I'm in Medjugorje with a group of Americans, mostly hockey dads from the Boston area, plus two men and two women with stage 4 cancer. We're led by 59-year-old Arthur Boyle, a father of 13, who first came here on Labor Day weekend in 2000, riddled with cancer and given months to live.

He felt broken and dejected and wouldn't have made the trip had not two friends forced him into it. But that first night, after he went to confession at St. James the Apostle church, psychological relief came rapidly.

"The anxiety and depression were gone," he told me. "You know when you're carrying someone on your shoulders in a swimming pool water fight—they come off, and you feel light and free? I was like, Wait a minute, what just happened to me? Why is that?"

The next morning, with his friends Rob and Kevin, he met another of the "visionaries," Vicka Ivankovic-Mijatovic, in a jewelry shop and asked for her help. Gripping his head with one hand, she appealed to the Virgin Mary to ask God to cure him.

Boyle said he experienced an unusual sensation right there in the store. "She starts to pray over me. Rob and Kevin put their hands on me, and the heat that went through my body from her praying was causing them to sweat." Continue reading

Sources

• National Geographic, from an article by Maureen Orth, an award winning journalist, a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair Magazine, and the founder of the Marina Orth Foundation which promotes advanced learning in technology, English and leadership for over 3,200 students in Colombia.
• Image: Diana Markosian, National Geographic.