The Lublin Miracle: the Weeping Madonna of Lublin Cathedral

Lublin, summer 1949. Poland lived under Stalinist rule. The Archcathedral of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist was still being repaired after war damage. Inside hung a copy of the Jasna Góra icon, the Black Madonna of Częstochowa.

Sunday, 3 July 1949. About 13:00, at the end of the midday Mass. Sister Barbara Sadowska, a Sister of Charity, was changing the flowers in front of the image. She saw red drops resembling tears. A bloody tear, under Mary's right eye.

She told the sacristan, Józef Wójtowicz. He told the vicar, Fr Tadeusz Malec. Malec first suspected seepage from the renovation. Then he went in and saw the tear himself. The auxiliary bishop, Zdzisław Goliński, assumed a damp stain.

Others watched it move. Alicja Karska was 22. "I clearly saw this tear flowing and soaking into the painted cuts on Mary's face," she recalled. Hanna Wyszkowska, born 1930, remembered "that very bloody tear running down the cheek."

Word spread fast, and by 10 July some 38,000 pilgrims had come. At the peak, up to 25,000 a day arrived from Warsaw, Rzeszów, Kielce and beyond. They prayed, sang and wept. Queues formed at the confessionals, some people confessing after 10, 20 or even 50 years. Healings and conversions were reported, and votive offerings piled up around the image.

Bishop Piotr Kałwa set up a commission on 4 July. The image was taken down, and the wall and the back of the canvas were found dry. The liquid was neither blood nor tears, and it did not react with any available chemical reagent. Its true nature was never established, and the image was not sent to Warsaw for X-ray. The bishop declared that the matter could not be recognised as a supernatural phenomenon, and most of the faithful read that as the result of state pressure.

The state called it a provocation by the reactionary clergy, a gathering of hysterical bigots. On 13 July panic swept the cathedral square. Helena Rabczuk, aged 21, was trampled to death. Whether it was an accident or a provocation cannot be determined.

The next day a sanitary cordon closed Lublin. Ticket sales stopped. Trains were turned back. On 17 July the state staged a rally of 20,000 to 25,000 people. Official data counted at least 600 detained, and sentences ran from several months to 6 years.

Fr Malec was arrested too, later freed after the intervention of Primate Stefan Wyszyński. Across Poland, rallies passed anti-miracle declarations. Some youth branches refused. They did not want to fight God.

The Church has never confirmed a miracle. Even so, Cardinal Józef Glemp crowned the image with papal crowns on 26 June 1988, with Vatican approval. John Paul II had prayed before it in 1987, and in 1994 he mentioned Lublin cathedral in Syracuse, home of another weeping Madonna. Since 2014 the archdiocese has kept 3 July as the feast of Our Lady of Tears. The processions continue.