March 8th 2010
Esat Altindagoglu is a French merchant who comes from Turkey. He claims of an unusual event that involves an icon. Some time ago, his wife, Sevin, purchased an icon of the Virgin Mary from a Lebanese priest. Recently, Mary began weeping tears of oil. The man, who lives in Garges-les-Gonnesse (approximately 20 km north-east of Paris), said the image has been shedding tears continuously from February 12th till the first weekend of March.
Hundreds of people have witnessed this weeping image. Now, people come every day to see with their own eyes the supposed miracle of tears. At first, they came only from France, but now people are coming from all over Europe.
In 2006, Sevin purchased the 30 cm high image as a birthday present. The family began watching this strange phenomenon on February 12th.
The Church acknowledged a similar phenomenon only once.
Esat’s next move is to ask the bishop of the diocese to come and explore the tears of oil. Then, after research, the Church may pronounce this phenomenon as a miracle, according to Altindagoglu. Perhaps …, or perhaps not. Over the centuries, there were hundreds of similar cases in which statues and images wept drops of blood, oil, or water. The Church pronounced only one of them as a miracle. It took place in 1973 in the nearby town of Akita. Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa, a nun, announced the stigmata of bleeding tears from the statue of the Virgin Mary. This phenomenon lasted more than six years.
