By Matters India Reporter
Warangal: Hundreds of people flocked to a Catholic church in Telangana state in southern India on June 29 after news spread that a Marian statue there had shed blood.
The statue was installed inside the Lourdu Matha Church in Warangal district on June 24 and it reportedly began oozing red colored substance three days later.
The church is at Inavolu, a substation of Lourdhu Matha Church at Gunturupalli in Singaram near Rangasaipet town. The parish is under Warangal diocese.
Blood like substance was seen oozing from the eyes of Mother Mary. People arrived from various parts of the district to witness the spectacle.
Parish priest Father T Marreddy termed the phenomenon as a precursor for bad things to occur and offered special prayers, attended by large number of people.
While devotees assumed that Mother Mary was in tears, others said colored water might have been coming out of the statue because of some manufacture defect.
The Singaram parish was set up in 1921 with a few Catholic families. Initially, it was under Kazipet parish.
Father Gino Pazzaglini, the then Kazipet pastor, used to visit those families occasionally. Later, when Reddipalem was made a parish in 1929, Singaram was transferred there.
Fr. A. Mazzola, a PIME, built the first chapel. Later, as the community grew, a new church was built. The present church was built by Pime Father Farina, the then pastor of Reddipalem, in 1975.
Singaram was bifurcated from Reddipalem and made into an independent parish with six sub-stations in 1976 and was given to Franciscan Capuchin missionaries. In 1992, the parish was given to the Salesians of Don Bosco, who handed it over to the diocesan clergy five years later.
Fr. G. Sudhakar built the Lourdu Matha Grotto and statue of St. Anthony in 2008 and Bishop Thumma Bala of Warangal blessed it.