WINDSOR, Ont. — With her head bowed slightly and her arms open in welcome, a Virgin Mary statue is drawing scores of people to an ethnic Roman Catholic church with reports that she smiles during the day and weeps tears of healing oil at night.
Two veteran investigators of religious and paranormal phenomenon cautioned, however, that the weeping Madonna figure is more likely a case of misguided faith or “pious deception.”
The plaster statue has been displayed since Nov. 6 at St. Charbel Maronite Roman Catholic Church, a modest brick building serving Lebanese Catholics, set between a sprawling industrial park and a busy stretch of Ontario's Highway 3. On a cold, rainy day last week, a small but steady stream of believers came and went throughout the day, pausing to kneel before the statue of the Virgin Mary and say a few quick prayers or linger to recite the rosary.
On the sanctuary platform, the 4-foot statue is surrounded by flowers, flickering candles, small baskets containing photos of people needing prayer or a few random bills, and coins. Computer-printed signs in English and Arabic warn, “PLEASE DON'T TOUCH.”
The church has been packed with more than 400 people at recent weekend Masses, but on a recent Tuesday evening, about 40 people attended the 6 p.m. Mass, with the Rev. Chaaya Akkari saying the liturgy in Arabic and Aramaic.
About 40 people also participated in a 7 p.m. recitation of the rosary. After about 20 minutes of recitations of the Hail Mary, Our Father, and Glory Be to the Father in Arabic, a reverent buzz arose from the front of the church.
‘It's a miracle'
Half a dozen worshippers encircled the Virgin Mary, holding digital cameras or cell phones high to take photos of her face.
A large man in a black leather jacket turned toward the pews and pointed a finger at the corner of his eye, then moved his finger down his cheek — signaling that the Madonna was weeping.
Bernadette Elachkar, a 56-year-old member of St. Charbel's, had just walked back into the church. She was going to leave, but her car was blocked by another vehicle. Re-entering the church, she got to see, for the first time, what appeared to be tears in the statue's eyes.
“Of course, it is real. It's a miracle!” Mrs. Elachkar said afterward.
Getting people to come to church and to worship God is the reason why the Madonna smiles and weeps, according to the statue's former owner, Fadia Ibrahim.
“I think it's a miracle from God,” Ms. Ibrahim told The Blade. “She wants people to pray, go back to the church. She like people to believe on her Son, and she want people to help each other as before.”
A woman's visions
Ms. Ibrahim, 48, a diminutive woman who immigrated to Canada 20 years ago from Beirut, said the story of the weeping statue goes back to 2008, when the Virgin Mary first began appearing to her in visions. “I can hear her like when you talk to me,” she said of Jesus' mother.
She not only hears her but sees her as well, she said.
“She's pretty. She keeps smiling. She covers her head. … She's 49, 50 years [old]. … She's like, I don't know how to say, she's different. She's different.”
Word spread quickly throughout Windsor, a gritty Canadian city of about 216,000 across the river from Detroit, about 65 miles north of Toledo.
Ms. Ibrahim's visions led people to come knocking on the door of her family's two-story brick home on a quiet suburban Windsor street. Then, in June, a family of Chaldean Catholics from Detroit arrived at the house with the statue. It was new and in a box, Ms. Ibrahim said, and the family gave it to her as a gift.
“We put it inside the house and during Canada Day [July 1], my daughter found out it start to leak oil,” Ms. Ibrahim said.
After the statue had been in her house about six weeks, Ms. Ibrahim said the Virgin Mary told her to have an enclosed pedestal built on her front lawn to display the statue. “People come by the first day, they bring flowers. I saw her smiling. And during the night, we open the light the first time after one hour and I saw her crying, leaking oil again,” she said.
Crowds and consequences
The crowds grew larger, with many praying the rosary every day. Her neighbors' irritation also grew because of the noise and traffic. One neighbor yelled at the pilgrims, interrupting their rosaries and prayers.
“The people cry. They want to pray and he said no, not even for two minutes,” Ms. Ibrahim said.
A complaint was filed with city building officials, who gave Ms. Ibrahim until Nov. 19 to remove the Madonna.
Meanwhile, pilgrims with cotton balls and Q-tips collected tears from the statue's eyes, taking the swabs home in small plastic bags. She said many people told her that they or people they knew had been miraculously healed by the oil of such serious health problems as leukemia, cancer, diabetes, and paralysis.
Ms. Ibrahim said oil also leaks from her own palms, sometimes during the rosary and sometimes when a priest prays for her.
With the city forcing her hand, Ms. Ibrahim tried to give the Virgin Mary to her own church, St. Ignatius of Antioch Orthodox Church, but the pastor refused.
Father Chaaya agreed to accept the statue at St. Charbel's, although he was not convinced at the time that the tears were real.
Father Chaaya washed and scrubbed the statue twice by hand, wanting to ensure there was no oil or residue or trickery.
Tears appear
For the first week that Mary stood in St. Charbel's sanctuary, there were no signs or miracles.
Then, during recitation of the rosary on the evening of Nov. 13, the Maronite priest said he and about 50 worshippers clearly saw tears dripping from the statue's eyes. “It's true. I saw it,” Father Chaaya said. “Now I know.”
The Virgin Mary statue has been weeping almost nightly ever since, and people have been visiting the church from throughout Ontario and Michigan.
The 48-year-old priest said he has been collecting the liquid, wiping the statue's eyes with cotton balls and putting them in small plastic baggies. He said it's “not oil,” but doesn't know what kind of liquid it is. He also has been wiping Ms. Ibrahim's palms with cotton swabs, collecting that oil in plastic bags.
Father Chaaya plans to send the samples to the office of Bishop Ronald Fabbro of the Catholic Diocese of London, Ont., in hopes that the diocese will test the tears.
The diocese has not made any commitments, however. It said in a recent statement that since Ms. Ibrahim is an Orthodox Christian and not Roman Catholic, “the diocese is not in a position to approve or disapprove the claim.”
Doubt arises
Testing of the statue and the tears is something that Joe Nickell, author of Looking for a Miracle and editor of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, strongly advises.
“I've made a special study of weeping effigies and other animated effigies. Basically, statues don't weep,” Mr. Nickell said in an interview. “Occasionally, there could be an illusion. There's everything from bird droppings to leftover raindrops, but most are, and I choose my words carefully, pious frauds or pious deceptions.”
The Amherst, N.Y.-based sleuth said he has been investigating such cases for 40 years and is the only person he knows of working full time to investigate reports of paranormal and supernatural activities.
“Someone would have to prove that the statue is weeping under conditions in which it is impossible to be tricked, and that is rarely the case,” he said. “Most of the weeping statues are fake. I've never found one that even caused me to have second thoughts.”
Rhett Rushing, a professor at the University of Texas-San Antonio, also is a veteran investigator of weeping Madonnas and other supernatural claims. “My theory as a social scientist is that you'll see what you came expecting to see,” Mr. Rushing said.
He said he has researched, investigated, or at least been made aware of about 650 cases of weeping or moving religious statues or icons in the last 10 years.
“Weeping icons were proven to be trickery, whether it be pumps or condensation at night. Usually this happens away from observers and then they find it the next morning,” Mr. Rushing said.
He recalled a case in which a thin film of oil wicked up into the body of a statue that had a bit of enamel paint scraped off near the corner of an eye. The opening in the paint provided a place for the oil to leak out, looking like tears.
Mr. Rushing said he is not concerned with factors that make a statue weep, only how people respond to it. The public is fascinated with the supernatural, he said. “You're looking at two words here: truth and faith. Where do they cross? And can they cross? You can't scientifically debunk or investigate something that's based on faith. A faith-based investigation is an oxymoron.”
A matter of faith
Farah Yousif, a young volunteer at St. Charbel's, looked at the same concept but from another angle: “It is what you see it to be. It depends on your faith,” she said.
Ilham Rizk, a member of the church, said she did not have any expectations about the statue when she first went to see it at Ms. Ibrahim's house, “out of curiosity, really.”
When it was moved to her church, she said she began to stop in and pray on her way to work and on her way home. It was because of her devotion to Mary, not because the statue reportedly wept.
During the rosary prayers on Nov. 13, she said she was kneeling beside Ms. Ibrahim when the statue's former owner elbowed her and said, “Look! Look! Her eyes are getting red. She's going to start weeping!”
“I swear to God, honestly — we're in church right now — by the fourth decat you could see it, it was just so clear,” Ms. Rizk said. “The tear formed on the top of the eye and dripped down and stopped at the bottom of the eye. It was a statue one second and then it became a miracle, right in front of my eyes.”
Contact David Yonke at: dyonke@theblade.com or 419-724-6154.
First Published November 21, 2010, 7:02 p.m.
