A Vatican academy is planning a new dedicated observatory to investigate’mystical phenomena’ around the world, such as ‘weeping’ statues of the Virgin Mary, stigmata, and ghost sightings.
The Pontifical Mariana International Academy (PAMI), which describes itself as a Holy See scientific institution, hopes to uncover ‘around a hundred ongoing phenomena’ in Italy alone.
According to Vatican News, the specialist observatory, which is still awaiting Church approval, will ‘evaluate and study apparitions and mystical phenomena’ around the world.
It will delve into ghost sightings, interior locutions, and stigmata, which believers interpret as bodily marks, scars, or pains corresponding to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion wounds.
‘In Italy, there are around a hundred ongoing phenomena that the Church is closely following,’ Mariologist Father Gian Matteo Roggio told local Italian media at the launch of the new Observatory Scientific Committee.
‘Many of these are local and limited in scope, and not all of them receive media or public attention.’
PAMI, which holds its first session on Saturday, has been following a strange case involving a weeping Mary statue in Trevignano, near Rome.
It involved an Italian woman who claimed her Virgin Mary statue could cry blood tears and multiply gnocchi and pizza. She is being investigated for fraud. Thousands of people flocked to see Gisella Cardia’s predictions after her Our Lady of Trevignano Romano statue began weeping blood.
Followers thought she brought messages from Mary and even predicted the Covid pandemic. According to local media, Cardia, 53, was exposed as a fraud after church investigators discovered the blood her statue wept was not holy and actually came from a pig.
Officials believe she has now fled after defrauding her followers of tens of thousands of Euros in donations.
Father Stefano Cecchin, part of the committee explained: ‘The purpose of the Observatory [is] to activate national and international commissions to evaluate and study apparitions and mystical phenomena reported in various areas of the world.
He added: ‘[It will] promote updating and training activities on this type of events and their multiple spiritual and cultural meanings, promote high dissemination and consultancy activities, especially at the service of local Churches and bishops, but also trans-disciplinary research activities in concert with academic institutions, both lay and ecclesiastical, and the publication of the results of the researches carried out.’