Today's prayer: Invoke the Mother of God with this devotion

In the middle of the ancient Sicilian seaport of Syracuse there is a concrete church 250 feet high, shaped like a teardrop. Pope John Paul II used it to outline his theology of cosmic tears. The inverted conical structure houses the last Marian sanctuary inaugurated by Pope John Paul. It was the dedication ceremony that gave him the opportunity to express his views on the spiritual meaning of crying. In short, theology goes like this: tears are generally expressions of personal joy or pain, love or pain. But when the tears shed by Marian images are declared miraculous by the church, they take on an extreme cosmic meaning. They show concern for past events and prevent future dangers. They are tears of prayer and hope.

The pope offered the view on November 6 when he dedicated the sanctuary of the Madonna of tears to Syracuse. The Sanctuary is the home of a small framed plaster image of Mary, which testifies to the tears shed between August 29 and September 1, 1953. Several cotton sacks containing tears are also found in the sanctuary. The alleged phenomenon occurred in the small apartment of a young couple, Antonietta and Angelo Iannuso, while waiting for their first child. The news spread quickly, attracting people to the apartment.

Local church authorities had tear samples tested by doctors. The reported evidence showed that they were human tears. Shortly thereafter, the Sicilian bishops approved the image as worthy of devotion. In 1954 plans began to be designed to build a sanctuary. The apartment became - and still is - a chapel called "The house of the miracle". Pilgrims continued to flow towards the site and the Iannuso family moved nearby.

One of the pilgrims was the Polish bishop Karol Wojtyla - the future pope - who visited Syracuse while attending Vatican II. At the dedication on November 6, the pope said that preceding him on the site was the Polish cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, who came on a pilgrimage in 1957 after his release from a communist prison. The pope added that a copy of the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Lublin, Poland, where he was once a university professor, started to cry around the same time, but "this was little known outside of Poland. "

Our Lady of Czestochowa is the patroness of Poland.

The pope suggested that the shedding of tears by Marian images could be a compensation for the fact that the Gospels do not record Mary crying. The evangelists do not mourn her during childbirth, at the crucifixion "and not even tears of joy when Christ rose from the dead," he said.

The tears of the image of Syracuse were shed after the end of the First World War and should be interpreted as a reaction to the tragedies of the war and the problems that arise from it, said Pope John Paul II.

Such tragedies and problems include "the extermination of the sons and daughters of Israel" and "the threat to Europe from the East, from a declaredly atheist communism," he said. Mary also sheds tears "in the apparitions, with which, from time to time, she accompanies the church on her journey across the world," said the pope. "Our Lady's tears belong to the order of signs," he said. "She is a mother who cries when she sees her children threatened by spiritual or physical harm."

The Iannusos, who still live, have four children now. Mrs. Iannuso takes care of the small chapel where the crying occurred. A copy of the original hangs in the chapel. Mr. Iannuso recently retired after working for years in the sanctuary.

The lower church, called the crypt, was opened for worship in 1968. During the November trip, Pope John Paul dedicated the largest upper church which houses 11.000 people. When the tears were shed in 1953, Mrs. Iannuso, then 21 years old, was in the fifth month of a difficult first pregnancy and her husband had difficulty finding decent work. The neighbors interpreted the tears as signs of Maria's compassion and compassion for the difficult condition of the young couple. Their first child, a boy, was born on Christmas day and is called Mariano Natale, Italian for Marian Christmas.

Mrs. Iannuso participated in the dedication of the papal shrine and had the opportunity to chat with the pope for a few minutes. But her husband missed the ceremony because he was hospitalized two days earlier with liver problems. "It is the first time that I have been absent for a sanctuary function," he told reporters later from his hospital bed. Iannuso said he didn't shed tears for missing the event, but added, however, that it made him "very angry" that he couldn't be there.