Connie Liptak claims to have taken a photograph of the international pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima closing and opening her eyes during her tour stop in Canton
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An Ohio woman claims to have witnessed a miracle, but local church leaders are skeptical.
Connie Liptak told Cleveland-based FOX affiliate WJW that she photographed the International Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima closing and opening her eyes during the inanimate statue’s tour stop in Canton.
“I knew it was a miracle because I had been looking at them all morning,” Liptak told the station. “They’re really closed. I mean, you can really see her eyelashes drooping.”
The Rev. David Misbrener, pastor of the Basilica of St. John the Baptist, where Liptak said the miracle occurred, told the Canton Repository — part of the USA TODAY Network — that he had doubts about what happened.
“I’m a little skeptical about such things, and the church is very cautious about such things,” Misbrener told the newspaper. “Anything can happen with a camera. In my opinion, it has served its purpose if it has helped someone mentally or physically.”
Other traditions about the statue of Mary
Believers attribute several miracles to the same statue, including healings and astral phenomena.
“We know she cried 15 times,” Larry Maginot, the statue’s keeper, told WJW.
Despite the priest’s skepticism about the claims of a flashing statue, Misbrener told the repository that a miracle of a different kind occurred during the tour stop.
“I would say the miracle is that people come together in churches and pray,” he said. “We need a lot of hope in our society. We are going through a big change right now.”
What is the International Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima?
The statue was commissioned in Fatima, Portugal, in 1947, in memory of a series of reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three peasant children, Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, between May 13 and October 13, 1917.
The statue was made based on a description by dos Santos, the eldest child and the only one who said she had spoken to Mary. She told church authorities that Mary had revealed three secret messages to her about the future. She became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005 at the age of 97.
The Vatican officially accepted the children’s account in 1930. The Marto siblings, who died at the ages of 10 and 11, were canonized by Pope Francis in 2017. Sister dos Santos was canonized in 2023.
The statue has been exhibited in over 100 countries and is currently on a tour of the United States that ends in late September.
