Weeping Mary, Bleeding Jesus

Sounds like a hot new kung-fu movie starring my hard boiled killer boyfriend, Chow Yun-Fat, but it's really just a duo of alleged miracles.

Actually, in Bavaria, not everyone is so sure it's a miracle they're witnessing:

Dozens of witnesses were on hand for the miracle. A Madonna statue in a hostel for pilgrims in the small Bavarian town of Heroldsbach suddenly began shedding tears two weeks ago -- fat drops of water running down her cheek and dripping off her chin. For skeptics, the photos are difficult to ignore. One worshipper even kissed one of the tears which had run down Mother Mary's cheek and plopped onto her hand.

"They tasted salty," Annegret Mewis told the German news agency ddp. "They must have been real tears." Indeed, virtually every one of the 60 or so faithful present were likewise convinced that they had just witnessed a miracle.

But not all. Indeed, even after hurrying over to check out what was happening at the Heroldsbach hostel, the local priest, Rev. Dietrich von Stockhausen, still wasn't prepared to immediately believe what he was seeing. "When heaven wants to give us a sign," he said, "then it will be one that we can understand. It won't be such a vague one, and one that is so easy to manipulate."

The cleric has his reasons for being skeptical. In 2001, a statue of the baby Jesus likewise started to tear up, but when von Stockhausen locked the little guy in his closet, the tears stopped.

Von Stockhausen says he wants to submit the tears to forensic tests, which I just adore. A religious man turning to science to test the authenticity of a miracle—that's brilliant.

Meanwhile, in India, "thousands of people" are making the pilgrimage to police radio operator Eric Nathaniel's home in the remote Andaman Islands, where two portraits of Jesus in his house have been "bleeding" for two weeks, according to witnesses.

Officials said red paint used in the portraits could be melting in the extreme humidity, but islanders and priests were coming in boats from remote parts of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago to pray.

"This is indeed a miracle and shows that Jesus was in pain because of our sins," said John Chrysostom, a priest at the Anglican Church of Port Blair.

Okay. Who am I to argue?

Personally, I prefer the sightings in weird objects to the seeping of fluids, but I can understand why Jesus and Mary like to mix it up. No one wants to be a one-trick pony.

Holy folks Gone Wild on baking sheets, pizza pans, doggy doors, ice, peanuts, x-rays, turtles, ultrasounds, chocolate, dying plants, sheet metal, trees, more trees, more trees, more trees, more trees, wardrobes, water stains, grilled cheese sandwiches, potato chips, plates of pasta, drywall, fish, and more fish.