NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - (Houston Chronicle) For 10 years, the flaking plaster statue of the Virgin Mary stood in its niche in Raquel Fernandez' front yard doing precisely what one might expect a statue to do. Absolutely nothing.

     Then early on Thursday evening about three weeks ago, Fernandez, 57, a recent widow, was aroused from a light slumber by a knock on her door. The visitor, a friend's niece who had come from Fort Worth for a funeral, was sputtering with excitement. The statue, she insisted, was moving.

     "I thought she was joking," Fernandez recalled. "But when I went to see, she was moving."

     Since then, thousands of visitors - believers, skeptics and the just plain curious - have trekked to Fernandez' modest house near Moody High School. There, at all hours of the day and night, they perch on hard wooden benches, mumbling prayers in Spanish, ever alert for the virgin's slightest twitch.

     Around them in the trampled yard are tables laden with colorful flowers and religious candles. Hanging on the wall are photos of the living and dead - the object of petitioners' prayers.