Maybe it’s the fog, or secret-bearing hills, but miracles have found a home in Pittsburgh. Beginning with the “Immaculate Reception” of 1972, the region has hosted some strange sights in the last few years. A Lawrenceville domicile housed “Shower Jesus” this year. The image of the savior emerged on bathroom plaster with the help of a water leak. “I got out of the shower and yelled, ‘Jesus Christ!'” Jeffrey Rigo, 30, told a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter in June. “My girlfriend asked me, ‘Oh, my God, what is it?’ I pointed and responded, ‘No, Jesus Christ!'” Rigo sold his plaster panel, resplendent with Christ’s image, to GoldenPalace.com for $1,999.99. In Brookline, the Virgin Mary materialized on a wooden door at the Semplices’ Pioneer Avenue home. Roughly 1,500 pilgrims descended on that site in 2001. The church generally avoids comment on private religious experiences, as it did in the wooden door case, says Diocese of Pittsburgh spokesman the Rev. Ronald Lengwin. The only time the diocese has investigated a reported religious miracle was in 1989, Lengwin said. On that Good Friday, three parishioners at the Holy Trinity Croatian Catholic Church in Ambridge, Beaver County, all saw a wooden sculpture crucifix blink its eyes, he said. Lengwin said the day of the occurrence in part prompted an inquiry, but no proof was ever found to support the eyewitnesses’ claim. The church has since shuttered its doors. Lengwin said the church’s goal was not to pass judgment on claimed miracles, whether they are Virgin Mary apparitions or that of the slightly more unusual variety, like say … visions of the Blessed Mother petrified in grilled cheese sandwiches. “You don’t have to believe in them,” Lengwin said. “They are not essential to our faith.” “We don’t know how to explain these things,” he said. Miracles have a special place within the Catholic faith, and they are best understood as acts of divine intervention, where God is thought to get involved. They are rare, and that’s on purpose, said Rev. Michael Slusser, theology chair at Duquesne University. Slusser said people sometimes grew skeptical out of “unwarranted expectations” about God, and miracles are small reminders that he exists. “They strengthen peoples’ faith,” he said. The Catholic church does investigate miracles, and usually it’s in order to determine sainthood. Canonizing is a process that can take years, decades or centuries. While some saints have been credited with hundreds of church-recognized miracles — mostly associated with healing — would-be saints face a difficult challenge. Attention is focused on supposed miracles that happen long after the holy person’s death. Last month, Pope Benedict XVI named five new saints, who each came with their own miracle. For one, Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga, a Chilean priest, is credited with curing a 20-year-old woman’s brain injury in 1996. Joseph Bilczewski gets credit for the miraculous healing of a 9-year-old’s third-degree burns. Lengwin said no Pittsburgh-area men or women have ever been canonized. Of course, sometimes a “saint” is just a “saint,” no matter the label. The New Orleans Saints have never been accused of anything particularly unworldly. They are named “saints” because they came into existence on All Saints’ Day, Nov. 1, 1966. Additional Information:

How to become a saint The process of canonization starts no earlier than five years after the candidate’s death. Local bishops investigate the life of the candidate and the findings are sent to the Vatican. The pope proclaims the candidate is ‘venerable,’ meaning a role model of Roman Catholic virtues, after a panel of theologians and cardinals approves the research on the candidate. If the candidate is responsible for a miracle after his or her death, the next step is beatification (Webster’s definition: to declare to have attained the blessedness of heaven and authorize the title ‘Blessed’). Then, to graduate to saint, the church must certify proof of a second posthumous miracle. Source: http://catholicism.about.com/

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