OUR LADY OF CIVITAVECCHIA

Day 307: March 15

Our Lady of Civitavecchia, Civitavecchia, Rome, Italy

The Madonnina of Civitavecchia is a 42 cm high plaster statuette, depicting the Queen of Peace, made by the Croatian craftsman Sthepan Vlaho; it was purchased in a shop in Medjugorje, on September 16, 1994, by Fr. Pablo Martìn, parish priest of the church of Sant'Agostino in Civitavecchia; the priest donated it to the Gregori family, belonging to his parish and living in Via Pantano, consisting of the head of the family Fabio, his wife Anna Maria Accorsi and their children Jessica and Davide.

The statuette had been placed in a niche, built by Fabio in the garden of his home. One day, little Jessica, five years old, who occasionally caressed and kissed her, caused the statue fall and created that splinter above the right side of the forehead, on the veil, which then - together with other scratches and small marks on the bust - would lead the police to affirm the impossibility that the statue was replaced after the tears. Given the consequences of that fall, Fabio Gregori decided to fix the image of the Madonna with cement. It was mid-September 1994.

On February 2, 1995, around 4:20 p.m., Jessica, who was five years old at the time, claimed to have seen a liquid, which looked like blood, running down the cheeks of the Madonnina's eyes. She warned her father and the latter, after notifying his wife, reported the incident shortly afterwards to Don Pablo, who immediately went to the Gregori, seeing the phenomenon in person.

On the evening of February 3, the event was repeated in front of some witnesses, and continued in the following days, while the number of faithful or simply curious people increased; journalists and law enforcement officers flocked, while on February 5 the news was broadcast on national news.

In the meantime, the bishop of Civitavecchia-Tarquinia, Monsignor Girolamo Grillo, was informed, who appointed a theological commission to study the phenomenon, while the first laboratory analyzes were being carried out. The Madonnina was also subjected to a brief exorcism, to exclude the possible demonic nature of the facts.

On the morning of 6 February, very early, Fabio Gregori decided to take the statuette to the church of St Augustin, entrusting it to the care of Don Pablo. The bishop, however, asked that the statuette not be kept in the church for more in-depth investigations and asked that it be returned to its owners, so to avoid the assault of the crowd. It was hidden from the crowd in the house of Giovanni Gregori and only then was it kept in custody, in a secret place, in the bishop's residence, waiting for the results of the tests.

On February 28, the results of the analyzes were announced: the Madonnina did not contain contraptions, the liquid examined was male human blood.

On March 1, the bishop of Civitavecchia went to the Vatican to see Cardinal Ratzinger because the fact had now invested public opinion and was no longer of interest to the diocese alone. The spokesman of the Holy See called for caution and prayer to Mary.

The police announced the results of their investigations stating that there were no replacements of statuettes, this was ascertained thanks also to the particular chips and imperfections of the statuette found in the photos of the tears and in that of the analyzes that coincide perfectly.

On April 4, an extraordinary revelation came to light that explained the bishop's rigidity towards the judicial authority: the Madonnina had wept in his hands. The experts had noticed a lengthening of tears, a sign of a new phenomenon and the bishop is forced to bring out the truth. In the meantime, he decided to give back the statuette to the church of St. Augustine and to the devotion of the faithful on Good Friday without any recognition from the ecclesiastical authority but thanks to the great requests of the population.

On April 6, however, while preparations were underway for the niche and for the Easter celebrations, the Madonna was seized as an element of investigations and therefore impossible to leave it free to be touched and perhaps tampered with. The clash between the curia and the judiciary is very hard. The release will come on the Tuesday after Easter, after a cold Holy Week. But now begins the struggle of the judiciary to obtain the DNA analysis of the Gregoris, who refused and have still not been performed.

Since June 17, 1995, the Madonnina has been exposed to the veneration of the faithful in the church of St Augustin in Civitavecchia.

St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"Heaven possesses you now, but earth has not lost you. You carry in your heart the whole world and its inhabitants and you will be fully blessed only when you will see everyone in God's Glory and Grace forever. Grant that this blessed day which opens the gates of Paradise for us may fittingly come for us. Blessed are you, O Mary."

(Justin Russolillo, Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1996, p. 160)