Worshippers flock to Argentina home to witness 'miracle' as Virgin Mary statue starts 'crying blood'

Hundreds of worshippers have flocked to a home in a remote town in Argentina's Salta province after a video of a statue of Virgin Mary appearing to shed tears of blood went viral.

The mysterious phenomenon is being hailed as a miracle by the worshippers who went to the town of Los Naranjos to see the statue first hand.

According to the Mirror, the statue of the Virgin of the Mystical Rose, one of the names Catholics use for the Virgin Mary, belongs to the Frias Mendoza family, who lives in the city of San José de MetánSan.

The family initially broke the story of the weeping statue through a local radio station.

The owner, who first noticed the icon shedding red tears in March, claimed that Mary visited him in a dream "the day before the miracle began."

"It was the first time something like this has happened and I was very scared. I thought it was some kind of punishment," said Mendoza.

The family's dining room has become a makeshift shrine to the statue after hundreds of people started arriving into the small town to pay their respects.

The icon will be moved to a local Catholic Church to allow more Christians to see it, Express reported.

"A lot of people come here to pray and light several candles devoted to the Virgin," said Priest Ricardo Quiroga. "If she cries again, we need to do something at a high level in the church," he added.

Priest Julio Raúl Méndez has cautioned people not to jump to conclusions, and he noted that there will be an investigation to look for a scientific or natural explanation for the phenomenon.

"The first thing the church does is to do a scientific analysis to see if there is a natural explanation. Only then, the possibility of a supernatural phenomenon is considered," said the priest.

While there have been numerous reports of weeping religious statues over the years, only one has been certified by the authorities in the Catholic Church. Most of the other reports have been proven to be hoaxes.

In 1984, a wooden statue of Our Lady of Akita, another name for the Virgin Mary, in Japan, was certified to have shed real blood, sweat, and tears after eight years of investigations.