Sanctuary of Our Lady of Tears (Syracuse)

On 29 August 1953 in a very small and humble house located in Via degli Orti S. Giorgio 11 in Syracuse, there was an inexplicable miracle: an effigy of plaster depicting the Immaculate Heart of Mary wept for four consecutive days when the girl, Antoinette, was pregnant and was suffering serious health problems arising from pregnancy.  The gathered the tears were subjected to scientific analysis that determined them to be tear fluid.  The devotion that followed was of enormous proportions.  The small effigy of Our Lady of Tears was first provisionally admitted in the nearby Piazza Euripides.  Luigi Garlaschelli, member of CICAP, reproduced several times the miracle of a tearing  statue of porous material by soaking it in a saline liquid. In a glazed statue some holes were drilled at eye level where liquid was able to escape giving the effect of tears.  Garlaschelli recovered an exact copy of the Syracuse statue made by the same manufacturer in the same period, and pointed out that it is just glazed plaster.

Following an international competition, French architects Michel Andrault and Pierre Parat designed the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Tears.  Construction began in 1966, but because of the extreme modernity of the project from the beginning there was a lot of controversy by citizens who considered the work a concrete monster that would weigh further on an urban area already heavily compromised.  These diatribes delayed the realization that ended only in 1994. During the excavation for the foundations workers unearthed a piece of road, the main route of the neighborhood Akradina from the sixth century BC.  After about 28 years construction was completed and the sanctuary opened on November 6, 1994 by Pope John Paul II.  Eight years later, the same John Paul II elevated it to the rank of minor basilica.

The sanctuary consists of the crypt and the upper temple, with a conical body formed by ribs in reinforced concrete that reach a total height of 74 m, surmounted by a steel crowning of 20 meters in height wearing a bronze statue Madonna gold, the work of Francesco Caldarella, surrounded by a halo. At the base of the cone are rectangular boxes which extend outward and house the various chapels.  In the upper temple is the central altar that houses the effigy.  On the floor of the crypt one can see preserved the remains of the Roman period