Pope Francis said Sunday that
apparitions of the Virgin Mary are "not always real" amid a
furore over a supposedly 'blood-weeping' statue of the Madonna
near Rome.
"Don't look there," the Argentina pontiff told State broadcaster
Rai when asked about apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
"That is a instrument of Marian devotion that is not always
real.
"There are images of the Madonna that are real, but the Madonna
has never attracted (attention) to herself.
"I like to see her with her finger pointing up to Jesus.
"When Marian devotion is too centred on itself, it is not good".
A Catholic bishop on Thursday advised the faithful not to attend
monthly meetings at the Lake Bracciano hillside town of
Trevignano before a statue of the Madonna while it investigates
claims by its owner that it weeps blood and that the Virgin Mary
makes apparitions there.
Civita Castellana Bishop Marco Salvi also told priests not to
comment on the supposed supernatural events at Trevignano, where
the statue is set in a glass case.
The owner, self-styled soothsayer Gisella Cardia, holds
meetings with hundreds of faithful before the statue on the
third day of each month.
Last month she said she said was undeterred by probe stemming
from a complain to police and an order to demolish the statue's
case.
"I won't budge an inch because I'm in the house of God and I
have the Madonna on my side," Cardia said.
As well as pointing out the 'apparitions', Cardia tells the
assembled crowd what the Virgin is telling her, usually messages
of hope.
Cardia, a 53-year-old who moved to Trevignano after receiving a
two-year suspended sentence for bankruptcy when her ceramics
firm went bust in Sicily in 2013, has been hosting the
apparition events for the last five years.
The former businesswoman, who until a few years ago went by her
birth name, Maria Giuseppa Scarpulla, said she bought the statue
at the Bosnian apparition shrine of Medjugorje a few years ago.
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