Posted on 03/01/2004 4:19:31 PM PST by mylife
Windows With Virgin Mary Image Broken
03/01/04
CLEARWATER, Fla. - Office building windows that thousands of visitors believe bear the image of the Virgin Mary — but experts said is just corrosion — were discovered broken Monday, police said.
The three top panes that showed what appeared to be the Virgin Mary's veiled head were destroyed, with just shards of glass remaining in the window frames. The damage was discovered when a worker arrived Monday morning and it is believed the damage was done overnight, police spokesman Wayne Shelor said.
Investigators were trying to determine who was responsible.
The image first appeared a week before Christmas in 1996 in what was then a home finance office, drawing almost 500,000 visitors within weeks. The office building later became the home of Ohio-based Shepherds of Christ Ministries.
Stretching almost 60 feet high and more than 20 feet across on nine bronze-colored glass panels, the image evokes a stained glass portrait of Mary. Shades of purple, blue, yellow and green wash across the mirrored surface, appearing to outline a robe-draped figure with downcast head.
Glass experts believe the image was created by a chemical reaction and corrosion of the metallic elements in the glass coating, but they could not explain why it took the shape it did.
So many pilgrims came to the site that extra police patrols were in place for a time.
Six months after the apparition first drew worldwide attention, someone threw an undetermined liquid on the shape, marring it. But after two days of heavy thunderstorms, the blemishes were no longer visible.
The property was also the scene of a 1997 scuffle between Clearwater police and a Polish immigrant that ended with the man's death. Wieslaw Skowronek, 44, struggled with police after he was seen acting strangely outside the building and died when an officer kneed him in the abdomen, rupturing his pancreas.
The man's widow accepted a $325,000 settlement from the city.
If this was a Jewish sign, the police would call this a hate crime.
You really do need a dictionary at a minimum.
Gravity and corrosion work together - the only "physical" explanation would lie in stresses in the glass caused by expansion. Still one would expect that those stresses would be uneven across the panels if due to settling, expansion etc. but the actual "display" is (sadly, was) quite regular across panels and a Madonna-like appearance was quite unmistakeable.
To be destroyed so closely, in the 1st week of the "Passion"'s release, is not a coincidence IMHO. Who the perps were I cannot guess but I would venture to surmise that they were not Christians. :-(
"The image first appeared a week before Christmas in 1996 ..."
To last until now ... this was a hate crime.
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