A bit of news on the mystical front.

For starters, Church authorities have proclaimed against an alleged stigmatic in Italy — “proclaimed,” to employ an understatement.

According to Italian media, it’s not your standard ecclesiastic rejection of supposed phenomena.

The “stigmatic,” Giulio Massa, has been “excommunicated by the Bishop of Salerno,” reports Le Cronache. “The story of Giulio and his own, like many followers who gathered in coteries throughout the province of Salerno, especially in the church of the Avvocatella of Cava de Tirreni monthly, is… a story full of apparitions, contacts with the high and holy spheres, then revealed a hoax with a lot of ‘bubble’ from Don Gennaro Lo Schiavo, a known exorcist priest and the bishop of Salerno.” A coterie is a small group; we take “bubble” to mean promotion or hype.

In this case, photos raised an alarm. When there is something too unsightly, including with a statue, it should be scrutinized more closely and kept at a spiritual distance. As we warned in a report that once mentioned Massa, quoting a couple of his “messages,” “We have to be hugely cautious with such stigmatics and seers, of course, and especially with morbid ones. Most have question marks, large and small. To be frank, some simply repeat each other. Or it gets too hopeless and dismal. We can be led down a blind alley — and must be particularly cautious when matters are made to be too dark. After all, for those who follow Christ, there is Heaven. There is eternity. There is unending Light.” 

A strange case, Massa, to say the least. There were warning signs. It was not just the statues or that Giulio was too dire in his proclamations; more startling were accusations of sexual harassment or abuse.

“Unmasked: the false seer who would have abused a girl from Castellamare,” was a headline in the aforementioned newspaper. Noted another, the Metropolis: “In the beginning, the seller of fruit at retail (grocer), Massa had undertaken a new and more enterprising activity: he had a little Madonna at home that was weeping (even if the Curia never expressed itself clearly on this thing) and claimed to have the stigmata. Giulio Massa [real first name Carmine] had organized prayer groups at his house: young and old were meeting in a hall to recite the Rosary.”

“By now the facts about Giulio Massa are known and have been divulged by the media,” a priest, Don Gennaro LoSchiavo, who hosted him in the church of Avvocatella in Cava dei Tirreni, is quoted as saying. “The Archbishop of Salerno has summoned me and told me that he received several complaints and with certain proofs such as photos and films from various parts of Italy and abroad on the account of the presumed seer. Giulio himself [continues the exorcist] wrote me a message a few days ago in which he recognizes his mistakes by asking for public pardon. We will continue to organize the cenacles and pray also for his conversion. I ask you only silence and prayer.”

We have to report the good and the bad.

In obedience we’ll respect that call for prayerful silence, and leave the matter there.

And elsewhere?

There are other cases (and photos) from Italy that raise eyebrows [above from a blogger named Walter Sull, Professi i Rivelazione], including another supposed stigmatic. Is the Cross a bit, shall one say, contrived? We’ll say this: unique. States the blogger (rough translation):

“Giorgio Bongiovanni founder of the Anti-Mafia 2000 magazine, stigmatized and prophet for years, announces the return of Christ, and here I support him and esteem him, as I admit all the seers and prophets like Stefania Caterina, who announce the return of Christ but without adding heresies as George does. I attended last year at a conference of which I will later testify in which Giorgio said certain things that bothered me, such as that the Madonna should not have secrets. The Most Holy Trinity is denied by George through reincarnation, which he strongly believes and which, according to him, Jesus taught Nicodemus. In other conferences he expressed that reincarnation is the Resurrection and to be the reincarnation of John the Baptist, of one of the three shepherds of Fatima, of a solar miracle being Nibiru…”

It’s not certain who he thinks was reincarnated. Was this “stigmatic” claiming to have been all those personalities? And now prophesying the coming of an exoplanet?

Some discernment is not arduous.

For too long, many have assumed that anyone exuding blood in a remarkable away is automatically holy. But like any spiritual phenomenon, evil can ape what is holy; there are manifestations from both sides. And though rarer, there is also outright fraud. Such cases have been particularly prevalent not only in Italy but South America.

Such is life on earth: whether spiritual matters or worldly ones, it is often a challenge to determine authenticity.

[Footnote: On another, brighter, and lighter front, we receive a note from a devout man named Arrow Osborne who sent the photo below, saying that Mary somehow materialized on a photo taken with an ‘instamatic’ camera, which she is calling Our Lady of the Tear of Joy. It occurred near Cincinnati as someone she met was taking pictures of balloons released at the home of a woman in the area to celebrate Mary’s official birthday last year, in connection with a visit from another mystic, Carmelo Cortez, of the Philippines.

“When all of this was happening, the sun was spinning and some people were saying, ‘Look at the sun!'” explains Arrow [see her full account]. “I went into the house and went up stairs, walked in the bedroom where [my friend] Neil was. Neil just took a picture using a Instamatic camera as the balloons were still going up, then turned to me and said, ‘This is yours.’ I watched the image appear of ‘Our Lady of the Tear of Joy’ in the photo. There were no images of Our Blessed Mother on any of the balloons, nor in the trees, nor anywhere! Our Lady has said we are to say the Memorare when we look upon this image of her. Our Blessed Mother has said that when we say the Memorare prayer, we are fleeing to her and all those who flee to Our Lady will be led to her Son.”

Meanwhile, another viewer, Cecelia Rudbeck writes: “This is a photo [below] a friend sent me. It is from Medjugorje during prayer of the Rosary on February 11, 2018.” The Feast day of Lourdes!]