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Fresno, Calif., May 11, 2016 / 04:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A statue of the Virgin Mary in Fresno, Calif. appears to be weeping miraculous tears, according to witnesses.

The family that owns the statue says the tears have been coming and going for about the past year and a half.

According to witnesses, the tears appear to well up in Mary’s right eye and stream down her face. Maria Cardenas, owner of the statue, placed a glass under the statue's chin to collect the apparently miraculous tears and share them with people who come to see it.
 

Are you a believer? A fresno woman says this statue of the Virgin Mary has been weeping for months. @ABC30 pic.twitter.com/nCoUuwNg7q

— Joe Ybarra (@JoeYbarraTV) May 9, 2016  


The statue was a Mother’s Day gift to Cardenas 10 years ago, she told local news station ABC30 Action News. However, it didn’t start weeping until after the murder of her cousin.

Although the family is not publicly announcing where they live, they have invited many people into their home to see the weeping statue for themselves.

"We're not hiding her, but at the same time, we don't want anything to happen to her,” a caretaker of the statue, who chose to remain anonymous, told ABC30.

The news crew stayed to see the statue weep, and reported that the tears were oily, smelled like roses, and were welling up continuously.

The caretaker also said that several priests have come to observe the statue and have said that it appears miraculous.

Bishop Armando Ochoa of the Diocese of Fresno said in a statement that he is “just becoming aware” of the apparently miraculous statue.

“It is unknown who the priests are that were being referenced in a related televised news story, as the Diocese has not had any member of the clergy report this matter to Bishop’s Office, to date,” Bishop Ochoa said.

The family will be contacted by the diocese in a private manner in order to offer pastoral guidance regarding the phenomenon, he added.
 

Here's a closer look at a 'tear' falling from the statue's face. Hoax or blessing? What do you think? #VirginMary pic.twitter.com/hW4opCUHli

— Joe Ybarra (@JoeYbarraTV) May 10, 2016  


The highest recognition that the Catholic Church gives to an alleged miracle is that it is “worthy of belief.” Investigations of reported miraculous events (which, in the case of weeping statues, typically includes DNA testing of the tears, among other things) may result in a rejection if the event is determined to be fraudulent or lacking in supernatural character.

Alternatively, the Church may declare that there is nothing contrary to the faith in a supposed miraculous phenomenon – but without making a determination on whether a supernatural character is present.

“The Catholic Church is very cautious with these matters and employs science where possible to ferret out hoaxes and other non-supernatural explanations,” said “Miracle Hunter” Michael O’Neill, who extensively researches Catholic miracles.

“Tears are collected and tested to see if they are human (pig's fat has been found in some false cases) and statues may be x-rayed to rule out any internal mechanism used to fraudulently mimic the flow of tears,” O’Neill told CNA in e-mail comments.

“Some weeping icons have been shown to have natural causes - condensation or leaking ductwork in the wall behind them. On a few very rare occasions these lachrymations (tears) have been found to have no explanation and are worthy of belief as being miraculous.”

There have been many claims of weeping statues or icons of Mary and other saints throughout history, with a few of them being deemed worthy of belief by the Church.

One of the best known and most recent examples occurred in Syracuse, Italy in 1953. An Italian woman, Antonina Janusso, was cured from pains while witnessing a weeping plaque of the Madonna in the home of the parents of her husband, Angelo.

The tears purportedly were the source of many miracles throughout Italy. In a 1954 radio message Venerable Pius XII approved of the miraculous weeping after the tears were found by four different doctors to be human.

Another more controversial case occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s in Akita, Japan, where Sister Agnes Sasagawa of the Handmaids of the Eucharist claimed to have received 101 messages emanating from a bleeding, weeping wooden statue of Mary.

Tests from Christian and non-Christian doctors found the blood on the statue to be type B and the sweat and tears type AB. The nun’s claims, including the messages, were originally rejected by her archbishop, but then accepted by the local bishop, John Shojiro Ito of Niigata, who on April 22, 1984, after years of extensive investigation, declared the tears to be of supernatural origin and authorized veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita. The Vatican has not issued a formal statement on the matter.

Unlike Marian apparitions, where the Blessed Virgin appears to a member of the faithful with a message, weeping statues require the faithful to seek their own interpretations of the miracle, O’Neill stated.

“Weeping statues often cause quite a stir and inspire people to reflect on the meaning of such a phenomenon,” he said.

While waiting for the result of official investigations from the Vatican, O’Neill said that the faithful can pray and reflect on the tears as a symbol of suffering.

“As is the case of all miracles, the purpose is certainly to draw people closer to Christ and considering the image of the Sorrowful Mother's tears, it is sensible to reflect on the suffering and death of Jesus Christ and as well as our own sins. Such prodigies can foster introspection in all of us and can bring us toward a conversion of heart.” 

 

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Vatican City, May 11, 2016 / 04:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- 3-D printing of human tissue. Organ transplant therapy for cancer victims that reduces fatalities by 75 percent.

These developments are on the cutting edge of what adult stem cells can do for the medical field. And standing alongside them is the Catholic Church, which promotes ethical forms of research that have yielded the most promising results.

A recent Vatican conference focused specifically on ethical forms of stem cell research drew companies and leading experts to discuss the future of the rapidly developing field.

“For the Church to be working with those who are finding exciting new cures and new therapies is a very natural thing to do,” Archbishop Paul Tighe told CNA.

The Ireland-born archbishop, who serves as adjunct secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture, told CNA that the Catholic Church’s concern for the good of human beings means the Church has to be involved in the discussion.

Catholics have an institutional presence in the forms of universities and hospitals. They’re also motivated by another inspiration.

Jesus was “above all a healer,” he said. “He restored health to people. And that’s really the care that people responded to.”

The April 28-30 conference at the Vatican was titled “Cellular Horizons: How Science, Technology, Information and Communication Will Impact Society.”

The event was co-hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the U.S.-based Stem for Life Foundation, a non-profit based in New York. Since 2011, it is the third regenerative medicine conference that has been organized in the Vatican.

The conference gathers scientists, physicians, patients, religious leaders, philanthropists and government officials to discuss adult stem cell research and its uses and therapies.

Among those at the conference was Dr. Donna Skerrett, M.D., the chief medical officer of the Australia-based medical company Mesoblast Limited. She said her company’s stem cell research appears to have aided treatments for complications in organ transplants for cancer victims.

Donated adult stem cells can help a condition called acute graft versus host disease, which otherwise has a fatality rate of over 80 percent among transplant patients. According to Mesoblast’s trial research data, Skerrett said, these patients are now surviving at a rate of 80 percent.

She said “we’re very encouraged by the positive results and the ongoing trial is in place to keep going.”

Keith Murphy, the CEO of the San Diego-based company Organovo, told CNA about his company’s technology that creates living human tissues in a technique known as “bioprinting.”

“We take cells of many different types and we print them with a 3-D printer to make tissues,” he said. “It’s a little like making something out of Legos, where you’re going to actually place specific blocks of specific colors in a position and you’re going to build something up layer by layer. Except that we use cells as a blocks.”

“You put different cell types on top of each other or next to each other. You create a pattern, you put that into a computer, and the automated system deposits the cells and creates a living tissue. All the cells will join together and make one living tissue.”

Just as 3-D printers use plastic or metal, human tissues can be printed in a way useful for research and, perhaps one day, transplant.

Murphy’s company creates human tissue for drug research.

“We’re so reliant on animal models for drugs and drug discovery,” he said. Research like his company’s could help find new drugs for conditions like fibrosis and Alzheimer’s disease, where good animal research models are lacking.

In three or four years, Organovo hopes to start clinical trials for a “liver patch” to help diseased or failing organs. The treatment could extend the waiting period for a person who needs a liver transplant.

While Catholic teaching forbids research on embryonic stem cells – which requires the destruction of humans at the early embryonic stage – it allows and even encourages research on adult stem cells, taken from developed tissue without destroying a human life.

“Most cell therapies these days are not embryonic anymore,” Murphy explained. “Not a lot of companies have used embryonic stem cells as therapies, in part just because you stay away from any ethical issues if you go a different route.”

Embryonic stem cell treatments tend to rely on injection into the bloodstream, while Organovo’s patching technology could allow a large amount of cells to go “exactly where you want them and stay there.”

He said adult stem cells have also shown promise in fighting immune diseases, strokes and Crohn’s Disease.

Embryonic stem cells, in contrast, have failed to yield results in any treatment or cure, despite large amounts of government funding.

Archbishop Tighe said that the Church has always tried to ensure that researchers would prioritize adult stem cell research, which avoids the ethical problem of embryonic stem cells.

“This is a form of research that doesn’t have that ethical difficulty about it. What’s reassuring is that the experts seem to be saying that it’s also a more efficient form of research. It’s giving more results,” he said of the adult stem cells.

He said such research examines “forms of healing that come from within our own God-given bodies.” He suggested that the Church’s lack of a commercial interest in the research can help it serve as an “honest broker” to ensure good attention.

The archbishop said it is important that the research benefit the whole world and not just address the diseases prioritized in the technologically advanced West. It is also important that financial approaches to the research both respect those who have invested in new medicine and ensure that humanity’s benefits can be shared by everyone.

Discoveries about nature’s capacity to cure itself might also draw from “some of the traditional wisdom that was embodied in traditional medicine” in the less developed parts of the world, he suggested.

 

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(Vatican Radio) Religious liberty – what it means, who has it, and where it begins and ends – is fast becoming the central focus of a broad public rethinking of the role of religion in public life in Western societies, and indeed anywhere the influence of the Western civilizational project has been felt.

The Undersecretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Fr. Friedrich Bechina, FSO, recently delivered remarks at the official opening of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St. Mary’s University Twickenham, London, in which he argued that Catholic institutions of higher learning are privileged loci of that sometimes contentious public conversation, and are uniquely placed to prove the indispensable role religion has in society, precisely by playing it according to the peculiar identity and mission of the Catholic university.

Click below to hear Vatican Radio's extended conversation with Fr. Friedrich Bechina, FSO, Undersecretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education

“There is a most interesting development: on the one hand, religious freedom is not any longer granted,” as robustly as it once was to both individuals (though an individual’s freedom of belief is still protected) and to religious institutions in many legislative frameworks, Fr. Bechina told Vatican Radio in an exclusive interview following the Benedict XVI Centre’s launch ceremony on Thursday, May 5^th, “and there is a kind of decline of corporate religious freedom.” Fr. Bechina went on to say, “On the other hand, we have seen in the last twenty years a strengthening of the academic freedom of higher education institutions,” adding, “there is an interesting phenomenon: that a Catholic university, with a clear Catholic profile, probably has a better legal basis for expressing the faith, because [such institutions] do not come with just doctrine, but with something that is proved in dialogue – that is proved in a serious and intellectually honest pursuit of truth.”

The Undersecretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education went on to say, “Truth, as well as faith, cannot be without freedom – and this is a key [idea in the work of] Joseph Ratzinger and then Pope Beneedict XVI,” he said, “that we do not have to have fear of truth, and that truth can only be found in this kind of freedom, and so the university can become the place – the ‘safe place’ of the Church – to develop its mission in an intellectually honest way and in dialogue with other opinions.”

Fr. Bechina praised the work of St. Mary’s and the Benedict XVI Centre in fostering just such an engagement. “I think it significant that such a research centre, which also is focusing within a university on questions of religion and society, should be named after [Benedict XVI],” who is, “an eminent academic,” who throughout his carreer has been able to dialogue, “not because he had just soft opinions on many things, but he had very clear opinions – opinions which one may accept or oppose, but with which one can engage – and there is no progress in dialogue, no progress toward truth– no intellectual progress, if we do not have clear standpoints,” from which we engage each other in dialogue.  

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Alex Hofford, EPA

By Simone Orendain

MANILA, Philippines (CNS) -- President-elect Rodrigo Duterte's win in May 9 national elections was "a strong reminder that people want change," said Father Anton Pascual, president of Radio Veritas, the country's largest Catholic radio network.

Father Pascual told Catholic News Service May 11 that he had "high hopes" Duterte would crack down on corruption, criminality, "unchecked terrorism" and drug pushing, and he suggested he start with a "big fish" corrupt official to set an example.

Duterte has a charism for identifying "with people's needs and aspirations. He verbalizes the language and longings of the people to cleanse society or reduce substantially the social ills," Father Pascual said.

Filipinos voted for 18,000 offices, from president to local neighborhood councilors. Some Catholic leaders were reserved about Duterte, the Davao City major known for tough talk. Throughout the campaign, Duterte said he would rid the country of criminals within six months of taking office. At times he had said he would do this legally, but at other times he did not include that caveat. 

In his last campaign speech, two days before the elections, Duterte again threatened to kill drug pushers, armed robbers and other "loser" criminals, telling hundreds of thousands of supporters in Manila, "Forget the laws of human rights."

Archbishop Antonio Ledesma of Cagayan de Oro commended calls for "reconciliation and healing" among the candidates after campaigns that saw name-calling and allegations flying against one another.

The archbishop told Catholic News Service the archdiocese honors the results of the presidential race. 

"But on the other hand, we are also asking everyone to be sure that all the rule of law and the constitutional processes are followed," said Archbishop Ledesma. "Because this is one controversial point that it's still not clear how the president will carry on his promises. But we are sure that he has already made statements that he will abide by the rule of law."

Before the elections, Archbishop Ledesma highlighted a Human Rights Watch report that tracked the more than 1,400 media-reported extrajudicial killings in Davao City. The archbishop warned against supporting a candidate who espoused the "culture of death."

Jesuit Father Joel Tabora, president of Ateneo de Davao University, tweeted, "I look forward to President-elect Duterte's leadership in forging lasting peace for Mindanao."

The 71-year old Duterte has been a strong proponent of giving Muslim separatists in the country's southwest their own state.

Peace was forged in 2014 between the current administration of President Benigno Aquino and the largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in a bid to end four decades of conflict that saw more than 120,000 people dead. But the peace process hit a major stumbling block after a clash between the rebels and special police forces in January 2015 left more than 60 dead. The incident sowed distrust on both sides and made difficult the passage of a measure that would create an autonomous Muslim majority region.

In a May 9 pastoral letter, issued as votes were being counted, Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, Philippine bishops' conference president, said the church would not back off from "reminding (Christ's) disciples of what fidelity to him -- in all things, including political life -- demands."

The archbishop said the church was praying for wisdom and discernment of God's will for those who won office. He said they should remember that God had a hand in their victories and that God calls public officials "to service and to care for the weakest and the most distressed in our midst," particularly children in need and exploited women.

"The greatest promise the church can offer any government is vigilant collaboration, and that offer, we make now. We will urge our people to work with the government for the good of all, and we shall continue to be vigilant so that ever so often we may speak out to teach and to prophesy, to admonish and to correct -- for this is our vocation," the letter said.

During the campaign, Duterte told the bishops' conference to quit criticizing his ways.

However, in his letter, Archbishop Villegas said: "Several critical, even spiteful, voices have asked us to desist from "interfering" in politics. We cannot. We do not aspire after office and we have sought none. We do not even impose upon the Catholic faithful a set of anointed candidates. But it would be a denial of Christ's universal lordship were we to desist from reminding his disciples of what fidelity to him -- in all things, including political life -- demands."

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