christianity is full of miraculous tales yet the catholic church has a very rigorous process for
determining if something is truly an act of god one case currently under consideration
is from the most unassuming of places a small congregation close to the u.s mexican border
hobbs new mexico parishioners are attending mass at our lady of guadalupe catholic church
toward the end of the service people start to notice something strange happening with
the statue of the virgin mary the worshipers get out their cell phones and start recording
from the video it appears the statue is crying actual tears take a closer look at the cheek
many of those who see the video believe this is a supernatural event and this is not the first time
something like this has happened religious scholar diana pasulka says this tradition goes back
centuries mary is the mother of god and she's sad and sometimes she cries tears of oil and
sometimes she cries tears of blood these are relics basically thought to have divine power
but how do we know this isn't some hoax meant to deceive the faithful it's time to ask the
experts is this proof or not we start with trained engineer and catholic miracle researcher michael
o'neal many people gathered to witness this on three different occasions of this statue of the
virgin mary weeping real tears first question did someone stage this we looked for internal ductwork
has something been installed inside the statue or outside the statue that would place tears
on the eyes in a mechanical way and that was ruled out we also have to consider somebody sneaking in
at off hours and putting droplets in the eyes and then alerting everyone saying see we're looking at
a weeping statue but we know that from the reports that people were gathered around the statue and
saw the statue begin to weep tears so the tears began to form on their own with witnesses around
so o'neil investigates if perhaps the tears were caused by a leaky pipe
there is no leaky pipe either below or above or inside or around the statue it's completely
a standalone statue finally could the tears be caused by condensation o'neill visits the foundry
that made the bronze statue this was the singular case of all the many statues that they had created
that exhibited this phenomenon and we look at these statues they're made of a bronze alloy and
so as such they cannot retain water physicist dr hakeem olusegy also weighs the condensation theory
what's special about the eyes that make that the location where it occurs and nowhere else on the
statue it wasn't sweating it was crying so what is it about the statue and the location of the eyes
that would make it cry but not do anything else and it's even more strange when you
consider what the tears were made of you would expect the liquid to be water but the liquid
has been tested and it turns out it's not water it's olive oil so that makes this even weirder
so if it's not a hoax a leak or condensation then what is it this seems to be an authentic case of
a miraculous weeping statue we may not know why it's happening but we know that it is happening
the catholic church has yet to verify this incident as a miracle but so far there's no
earthly explanation for the weeping mary of new mexico and that olive oil is what does it for
us our verdict an unexplained phenomenon and if you want to call it a miracle you go right ahead
you