By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
This little-known event involves a small plaster figure of our Lady showing her Immaculate Heart, which wept tears on numerous occasions in the city of Syracuse (Siracusa), Italy, for four days from August 29 to September 1, 1953, attracting thousands of pilgrims. Although not an apparition as such, this seems to have been an important development in the history of Marian prodigies and it was quickly recognized by the Church as authentic.
Syracuse is in Sicily, the large island at the foot of Italy, and in one of its poorest parts lived a young couple, Angelo and Antonina Jannuso. They were given a small plaster plaque of our Lady as a wedding present, and fixed it to their bedroom wall. It showed Mary’s heart as in the message of Fatima, that is, surrounded by thorns and flames.
It’s worth noting that the Communist Party still had quite strong support in Sicily, and that Angelo Jannuso was a follower of Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the Italian Communist Party at the time; neither was Antonina a particularly good Catholic.
On the morning of Saturday, August 29, the octave day of the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which at the time was celebrated on August 22, Antonina was in bed, suffering due to the effects of a difficult pregnancy, and also from a mysterious epilepsy-like sickness, when, to her amazement, she noticed that the eyes of the plaque on the wall were shedding tears.
Her sister-in-law, Grazia, also saw this happening, as did an increasingly large number of neighbors who gathered. Witnesses were able to see, touch, and taste the salty tears.
The weeping was not continuous, but happened about six or seven times that morning, and also again in the evening, when Antonina’s husband had returned home. By now it was apparent that her illness, which had puzzled her doctors, was cured, and all this led to the conversion of the couple, and many others.
Over the next two days the weepings continued at intervals, and were witnessed by thousands of people, even when the plaque was moved from the bedroom to a little altar outside the house.
On Tuesday, September 1, a commission appointed by the archdiocese arrived to investigate. The commission members compiled a report under oath, following a careful examination of the figure to ensure that nothing untoward was evident.
While they were present there were more tears, and so they were able to collect some specimens for analysis. They could find no natural explanation, or means by which tears might have been fraudulently produced. The plaque was small enough to be held in the hands and the plaster was only between half an inch and an inch thick. Once this initial work of the commission was over, the tears ceased.
Archbishop Ettore Baranzini arrived the next day to make inquiries and to speak to witnesses, as reports of miraculous healings began to spread, a development which would result in the formation of a medical commission.
He returned on September 8 with other ecclesiastics to pray the rosary, and to explain to the crowd the meaning of these tears, which he said were tears of sorrow and distress, a sign to a society and a culture which had gone astray.
Shortly after the tears ceased, on September 8, 1953, Pope Pius XII issued his encyclical Fulgens Corona (Radiant Crown), in which he announced the celebration of a Marian Year to commemorate the centennial of the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854.
On September 9, the laboratory analysis was published, and this confirmed that the liquid was exactly like human tears. The facts of the case were sent to Rome on September 10, to Giuseppe Cardinal Pizzardo, secretary of the Holy Office.
Archbishop Baranzini returned on September 19, to preach again to the growing crowds, telling them that these were the tears of a mother, weeping because of the persecutions her children were suffering in the East, and because of the loss of faith in the West. During September and October, over a million pilgrims visited the plaster figure of Mary, which had been moved to a more prominent location.
Archbishop Baranzini went to Rome on September 24, and met Pope Pius XII on September 27. In December, the bishops of Sicily met to pass official judgment, and their leader, Ernesto Cardinal Ruffini, explained their positive decision in the following statement:
“The bishops of Sicily, gathered together for their regular conference at Palermo, have heard the full report by His Excellency, Archbishop Ettore Baranzini of Syracuse, on the weeping of an image of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Having weighed carefully all the related evidence contained in the original documents, the bishops have unanimously judged that the reality of the weeping cannot be held in doubt.
“We express the desire that such a manifestation of the Heavenly Mother may inspire all to salutary penance and to a livelier devotion toward the Immaculate Heart of Mary and that there may be the prompt construction of a sanctuary to perpetuate the memory of the miracle.”
As time went on there were quite striking conversions and miraculous healings. The head of the medical commission, Dr. Michele Cassola, a nonbeliever, eventually, in the last week of his life, returned to the faith and received the Eucharist in the presence of a reliquary holding some of the tears from the plaque. By mid-November 1953, the number of apparently extraordinary physical healings dealt with by the medical commission was around 300, including the cure of a paralyzed little girl named Enza Moncada.
John Paul II
There is clearly a link, given the image of Mary’s Immaculate Heart on the plaque, between the supernatural tears of Syracuse and the message of Fatima, one which Church authorities were anxious to point out; and indeed Pope Pius XII was moved to ask if people understood “the mysterious language of these tears,” in a radio message delivered in October 1954 at the Marian Convention of Sicily. It is as if they were a sign from Mary, pointing back to Fatima, in which she was pleading with her children to listen to her requests and amend their lives.
Pope St. John Paul II visited the shrine on November 6, 1994, during a pastoral visit to the city of Syracuse, and reiterated the words of Pope Pius XII in saying that the tears of our Lady were a sign of the presence of Mary in the Church and the world, and that “a mother weeps when she sees her children threatened by evil, be it spiritual or physical.”
These tears show then that Mary really is our spiritual mother, and even though as at Knock she did not speak, her weeping was eloquent in expressing her love for her children.
(For more information see: www.madonnadellelacrime.it/eng_index.asp).
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk.)
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