PAMI

• Claims of appearances of the Virgin Mary and weeping statues have been common in Catholicism.
• And now they’re going to get a closer look – but on a worldwide scale.

Marian apparitions

• Catholics believe Mary is the mother of Jesus Christ, and the mother of God, who still makes her presence known.
• And the Catholic Church has officially recognized a number of sites where Mary has reportedly appeared around the globe.
• Crowds drawn by the children’s prophecy that Mary would reappear and perform a miracle reported seeing the sun “dance in the sky.” The most recent Marian apparition that a Catholic bishop has declared “worthy of belief” was in Buenos Aires province, Argentina, in 2016.

Mary’s tears

• A well-known example is the Madonna of Syracuse, Sicily – a plaster statue that seemed to shed tears.
• Investigators appointed by the church said the liquid was chemically similar to human tears.
• Mary’s tears have special significance for Catholics.

The possibility of fraud

• Perhaps because they address controversial issues, the standards were only made public in 2012 – nearly 35 years after they were first implemented.
• The bishop, or a committee appointed by him, evaluates the alleged supernatural phenomenon.
• Positive aspects include reports of physical healings and religious conversions, or a general deepening of faith among Catholics.
• Although belief in the messages endures among a small number of Catholics, the local bishop deemed the apparitions not credible.

Searching for meaning

• The Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis seems to be searching for proof of supernatural signs, which certainly draw intellectual curiosity and media attention.
• In spite of her physical condition, pilgrims who came to see her believed that she was praying for them.
• In my writings about the case of Santo, I was definitely tempted to focus on talk of the supernatural.

• A team of researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and around the globe has co-developed a process to convert bamboo into an ethanol fuel for powering cars and trucks.
• Through processing using ball milling, which grinds up the bamboo, and an enzyme treatment, the researchers were able to convert the bamboo into simple sugars, which can then be fermented to create ethanol.
• The researchers used Nigeria as a case study for implementing the fuel made from bamboo after Nigerian researcher Nneka "Blessing" Ekwe came to WPI to develop technologies to use bamboo for biofuel production.
• Sunlight is the primary need for growing bamboo and as such, the researchers say, this model could be widely applicable to many developing nations.