It was a miracle! Or at least seemed to be one. The date: September 20, 1985. The place: A Hindu temple, New Delhi, India. Traffic around the temple snarled as the curious rushed to witness a statue of the elephant-headed God Ganesha drink offerings of milk. A worshipper had described holding a spoonful of milk next to the statue’s trunk and watching in amazement as the milk disappeared! Apparently, the statue had miraculously consumed the milk. Ganesha is said to symbolize the removing of obstacles from one’s path and offerings of treats, mostly sweets, are thought to encourage him to bestow his benevolence on the donor. Milk, it seems, was accepted by Ganesha as a treat.
The statue in the temple was very thirsty because spoonfuls of milk offered by members of the crowd that had gathered also disappeared. It didn’t take long for the story of the miracle to spread and soon reports began to emerge about statues in other temples also guzzling milk. Sales of milk in Hindu communities in Delhi soared! And the phenomenon was not limited to India. Statues in Canadian and American temples also developed an urge to consume milk. As word of the miracle swept around the world, even a statue of the Virgin Mary in Singapore keenly accepted a treat of milk.
I remember getting interested in the story at the time and wondering what was going on. I gave no credence to any sort of supernatural explanation, but without any chance of a first-hand observation I could not venture a guess. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wonder long because scientists from India’s Ministry of Science and Technology were quick to investigate. The answer to the mystery was straightforward. Capillary action!
That explanation took me back to the very first experiment I ever performed in organic chemistry. It involved thin layer chromatography, a technique used to separate components of a mixture, in this case an extract of tomato paste. We were provided with small glass plates, akin to microscope slides, that were coated on one side with silica gel. We then placed a drop of the extract near the bottom of the plate and then positioned the plate in a jar with a small amount of solvent at the bottom. Much like water rising up a tissue dipped into it, the solvent began to move up the chromatography plate carrying the components of the tomato extract with it. But since the components differ in their respective attraction to the solvent and the silica gel, they separate as the solvent moves up the plate. Soon we observed a red spot for lycopene and a yellow one for beta carotene, two of the major components of tomato paste. This separation was achieved thanks to the phenomenon of capillary action, the result of molecules of a liquid having a greater attraction to a surface than to each other.
Now back to the milk-drinking statues. The clever scientists added a little food dye to the milk before offering it to the statue. It now became clear that at first the milk rose up the trunk by capillary action until gravity took over and caused it to run down the body of the statue. The dye made this obvious!
The Ganesha episode was my first encounter with statues performing astounding feats, but by no means the last. Propelled by that memorable event, I was stimulated to look into other reports of miraculous statues, mostly of the Virgin Mary. Instead of drinking milk, these shed tears or blood. The vast majority turned out to be hoaxes, with others having quite down-to-Earth explanations. For example, tears can actually be beads of condensation from humidity that form on the cold statue and collect in crevices, such as the eyes. Of course, providing mundane explanations for apparent miracles doesn’t mean that actual miracles cannot occur. Since science can never prove a negative, it is up to those who claim that miracles occur to provide incontrovertible evidence.
My interest has now been further heightened by an account of a statue of the Virgin that not only bleeds, but also communicates prophecies. To top things off, instead of taking nourishment, it provides it. The statue in question was purchased by Gisella Cardia in 2016 in Medjugorje, a village in Bosnia-Herzegovina that became a popular site for Catholic pilgrimages after six children supposedly witnessed a series of apparitions by the Virgin Mary in 1981. Gisella brought the statue back to Trevignano Romano, a small community close to Rome, and began to claim that the statue was transmitting messages to her. The revelations, which she wrote down after going into a trance, told of suffering the world would undergo because of the proliferation of sins, and supposedly even warned about a coming epidemic. Soon a shrine was built on a hillside and on the third of every month locals and pilgrims gathered to pray, hear the latest revelations from Cardia, and venerate the statue.
In response, Italian skeptics raised their collective eyebrows especially after a video emerged in which Cardia told of feeding people with gnocchi and pizza without the food diminishing in quantity. “It was a pizza for four and 25 of us ate from it without it ever getting smaller,” she claimed. This reminiscence of the miracle of the loaves and fishes prompted the skeptics to ask a private investigator to look into the matter. He found no evidence of the “miracle of the gnocchi and pizza,” but claimed to have found evidence that the statue was bleeding pig’s blood. Furthermore, it turned out that Gisella Cardia’s name was actually Maria Scarpulla and that she had been convicted of bankruptcy fraud in Sicily. Based on the statues marvelous feats, she had now set up a foundation to collect donations supposedly to fund a center for sick children. On hearing the back story, a number of donors proclaimed that they feel they have been embezzled.
At this point, the local Catholic Diocese decided to get involved and struck a commission composed of a psychologist, an exorcist, a theologian, a lawyer and a Mariologist. Yes, there actually is such a vocation. Based on the commission’s investigation, the Diocese’s bishop decreed that no supernatural events had taken place.
Scarpulla’s website now makes no mention of any monthly gatherings as it had previously done. Her current whereabouts are unclear, but she has hired a lawyer who claims that she is the subject of a witch hunt. In any case, I think it is safe to conclude that the hungry in Trevignano Romano should look to the excellent local pizzerias rather than wait for the statue of the Virgin Mary to pull off a “miracle of the pizzas.” Â
