The Madonna of Trevignano, north of Rome, taken in April this year. Since the lacrimation of the Virgin of Tears in Syracuse, Sicily, in 1953, the only one officially recognised as miraculous by a pope with a message from Pius XII, there have been countless phenomena of the same type around statues of the Virgin, of Christ or saints in Italy. — AFP
ON the third of every month, hundreds of the faithful gather in a windswept field in a village near Rome where they believe a statue of the Virgin Mary is crying tears of blood.
They also come to see the 53-year-old woman who they believe has been performing miracles and healing the sick since she brought the statuette home from a pilgrimage to Medjugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina, where many Catholics believe the Virgin Mary has been appearing since 1981.
