An apparent image of the Virgin Mary in the side of a Rogers Park tree has captivated a neighborhood often distracted by screeching sirens, cars that roar past, running children and breaking glass.
But in the shade of the tree, where hundreds of standing votive candles emit gentle heat and a slightly sweet scent, there is calm and peace. And, for many, there is faith.
"It's very hard to describe it, but I can feel that it's there," said Raymond Adames Jr., 51, who stared intently at the vision. "Somehow I can see it."
As many as 100 onlookers at a time have gathered at the corner of Honore and Rogers since last Friday when a neighborhood woman first saw the apparition, which is about 10 feet up, inside a scar on the tree. Chicago police had to close the street to handle the crowd the first night.
The oval-shaped scar looks like a medallion for a chain, and the undulations in its scar tissue suggest a cloaked person.
This is the 10th religious apparition reported in the Chicago area since 1984. They have ranged from a weeping painting of Mary at a Greek Orthodox church to statues of Mary that reportedly moved on their own.
Many of the Hispanic people who have gathered in Rogers Park have adorned the impromptu shrine with images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas. Our Lady of Guadalupe refers to the 1531 vision a peasant in northwest Mexico had of the Virgin Mary.
"People want to know `Is it authentic?' The scientific authenticity is not as important as does it cause an authentic response in faith by the people," said the Rev. Patrick Lagges, vicar for canonical services of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.
"We tend to put too much stock in the scientific proof of these things. If we're talking about a miracle, we're talking about something that is not measurable by science but is on the level of faith," Lagges said.
"We believe that in Jesus the divine became human. That didn't end with Jesus' death. The divine continues to be revealed in humanity."
He said that in most cases where people report seeing the shape of the Virgin Mary in a tree trunk, window or wall, or see tears flow from a statue or picture, "the archdiocese doesn't start any formal process to investigate them." He said he did not expect there would be any investigation in the Rogers Park case.
"We don't make a judgment on it. We look for its effect on the lives of people," said the Rev. Esequiel Sanchez, the archdiocesan director of Hispanic ministries. "Most of them are going because they are curious. But people are looking for a spiritual connection they may not be experiencing in their daily lives. We try to listen to what their hearts are yearning for."
Lagges said Chicago never has had an apparition of the Virgin Mary or an incident where a statue or icon appeared to weep that has been verified by the Vatican as a miracle.
"It takes a long time to convince the church [that any vision or manifestation] is authentic," Sanchez said. He cited the case of Lourdes, France, where in 1858 a young peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous reported the Virgin Mary appeared to her 18 times in six months.
Crowds from all over the world flock to a spring that Bernadette discovered, she said, at the direction of "the Lady." Its waters are believed by the faithful to have curative powers. But it was 1933 before the church declared Bernadette a saint.
"I feel something special because I believe it," said Tina Coronel, 30, a neighborhood resident. "I think it's the Virgin. I can see the face, the shape."
People peered through the dirty bus shelter to study the tree. Cars driving by honked in homage to the shrine, which includes Easter Sunday-sized flower arrangements on the tree, resting on a makeshift altar and placed on end tables from someone's home.
The apparition has drawn a mixed reaction.
"I don't know," said Brenda Parkinson of Rogers Park as she stared at the tree. She moved around for a different angle. "I am not Catholic, but I don't know for sure. I'll take another look."
Those who do see it can't say how they know for sure.
"I was here the other night. There were over 100 people . . . crying, praying. It was very moving," said neighborhood resident Markeitha Singleton, 29. "Even when I walked over here I'd feel a presence. A spiritual presence. It's a blessing to be able to walk past and be a part of it."
Notes and pictures left at the altar asking for intercessions confused a few who wandered up to the shrine to ask who had died on the corner. But in fact, many in the crowd came to feel a healing touch from the Virgin Mary.
Tina Alanis, 28, brought her 4-year-old daughter, Ariana, who has had a persistent eye infection that prescription medicine has not cured.
Alanis stretched up high to brush a red carnation against the image of Mary. Then in four gentle strokes, she caressed the closed eye of her daughter with the flower as the little girl asked the Virgin of Guadalupe to take away el dolor, the pain.
"She believes if she asks the Virgin Mary, she will feel better," said Coronel, who is Ariana's aunt.
Other images have captured attention
* June 1984. At St. John of God Catholic Church on the Southwest Side, a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary appears to shed tears. The Archdiocese of Chicago investigates the phenomenon for more than a year before announcing it could not positively rule out natural causes for the liquid oozing from the wood.
* Dec. 6, 1986. At Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church on the Northwest Side, a painting of Mary begins to weep on the saint's name day.
* April 1987. In the apartment of a retired tailor on West Devon, a painting of Mary and Jesus appears to weep.
* July 1991. In Hillside, a retired railroad worker says he saw a large fiberglass crucifix bleed in the veterans section of Queen of Heaven Cemetery. So many people come to see the crucifix, some of them trampling over or driving on graves, that the cemetery has to move the crucifix and create a special parking lot for it.
* April 1994. In Cicero, drops of moisture that look like tears stream down the cheeks of an icon of Mary at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church. The icon becomes famous as Our Lady of Cicero.
* November 1994. In St. Charles, the owner of the Angels Kisses religious gift store says six plastic statues of Mary bowed their heads after being unpacked and having rosaries placed around their necks.
* May 1997. In Schiller Park-First, a tiny paper copy of the St. George Antiochian icon oozes oily tears. Then the faithful see the same image appear lifesize on a picture window behind the makeshift shrine housing the paper icon. An Orthodox bishop declares the events "an extension of the miracle of Our Lady of Cicero."
* July 1997. In Hanover Park, a security light that comes on at dusk creates a shadow on the side of an apartment complex wall that many believe resembles the shape of the Virgin.
* July 1999. In Joliet, a shadowy outline of Mary is seen in the second-story window of a vacant house.
* July 2001. In Rogers Park, an apparent image of Mary appears in an oval-shaped scar on the trunk of a tree.
Chicago's Mystery
In slight repose, she gazes upward and east down Rogers Avenue past a beat-up bus shelter, under the railroad tracks and toward Lake Michigan.
Virgin Mary Image Latest In Long Line[Original headline: I can feel that it's there --somehow I can see it']
In the last 20 years, there have been 10 reported religious apparitions in the Chicago area, each one of them drawing dozens--and sometimes hundreds--of believers. They include statues, paintings and icons that appear to weep or move, and images, shapes or shadows that appear on walls, windows and--most recently--the trunk of a tree.
Chicago Sun-Times / IL | Annie Sweeney + Brenda Warner Rotzoll - July 15 2001
