The Lake Ridge Weeping Statues and Fr. James Bruse

Lake Ridge, Virginia, sits in the Diocese of Arlington. One writer called it a government town, full of reasonably credible witnesses. Its parish is St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. In 1990 a new associate pastor arrived there. Father James Bruse.

Later accounts say it began in November 1991, at his parents' home. Statues reportedly wept when he entered the room. After Christmas came sharp pain in his wrists, and blood on unbroken skin.

After New Year's Eve, pastor Daniel Hamilton, a self-described cynic about such things, saw it for himself. "I looked at his statue of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and the statue was crying blood," he said.

January 30, 1992. Parishioner James L. Carney, a retired Army colonel, held a small statue. He watched water roll down its porcelain cheeks. His journal would record more than 50 incidences of statues weeping water and blood.

A Washington Post reporter watched a foot-high statue. "A bead forms under the alabaster-pink chin. It swells. BLOP, it falls." Four small puddles formed at the base. Parishioner Tom Saunders said he saw supernatural events near Bruse three times.

March 6, 1992. A local CBS affiliate aired the story. Three days later it went national on the UPI wire. Bruse showed reporters pink marks on his wrists and hands. He believed they came from Christ. Asked about a hoax, he said he would be just as skeptical in their place.

The weeping followed him. At Our Lady of Angels in Woodbridge, water reportedly appeared on a carved wooden statue of the Virgin Mary during a Mass he said for schoolchildren. At St. Columba in Oxon Hill, Maryland, he joked that he would not touch the statues because it might cause them to weep. A stained-glass window he had touched dripped water. So did two statues he had not touched.

The Diocese of Arlington urged great caution. According to Carney's book, Hamilton and Bruse met Bishop John R. Keating and Monsignor William Reinecke at the chancery on March 2, 1992. "All the statues wept," Carney wrote. Stephen Ryan, an advocate of the case, says the chancery feared a "circus atmosphere." Its statement held that with no overt divine message, there was nothing to investigate. Parish and clergy were forbidden to talk about the events. In August 1992 Reinecke died by suicide amid abuse allegations. Ryan links the two stories. That link is his opinion.

Bruse denied trickery. Asked by Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope whether he faked the stigmata and the tears, he said "No, no, no." Adams treated the stigmata as self-inflicted. He noted the wounds were on the wrist, not the palm, and pointed to Bruse's showmanship: three Guinness records for riding a roller coaster. A 1997 skeptical article noted that most of the weeping statues stood in Bruse's private office, and that a request to examine them under controlled conditions was ignored. One irreverent account claims a test found simple water. It names no lab.

The main series ended in July 1992, though Ryan says statues kept weeping, at times profusely. Carney's The Seton Miracles reached a fourth edition in 1998. In 1995 Bruse left to become pastor of St. Francis de Sales in Kilmarnock. The Washington Post noted that his claims had brought thousands to see crying statues. The chancery never issued a formal declaration.