Fact Check: Are idols of Jesus, Mary shedding tears of blood in a Vijayawada church?
By Satya Priya BN Published on 24 March 2020 4:57 AM GMT
Hyderabad: The Indian government has put 75 cities in the country on lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Responding to these orders the governments of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have shutdown the two states till 31 March.
After the first Corona virus case was reported in the Kothapeta area in Vijayawada, 30 wards under Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC), within a 3 km radius zone from the Kothapeta area, have been declared containment zones.
Under such circumstances, a video is going viral on WhatsApp and Facebook claiming that idols of baby Jesus and Mother Mary are shedding tears of blood. A Facebook user posted the video and wrote, "Statues of St. Joseph and Baby Jesus crying, and, in the same church, a statue of Mother Mary crying tears of blood. (Apparently, this miracle happened last night at 7.00pm in a church in Vijayawada. I checked on the net -- it's on YouTube, posted yesterday.) Video (sic)"
Fact Check:
The above claim is FALSE.
NewsMeter did a search using the keywords "Baby Jesus crying in Vijayawada". We found that this video has been on the Internet since 2017. We found a video on YouTube uploaded on 30 March 2017 by a person named Dilip Reddy with the title "St. Joseph and baby Jesus crying tears and Mother Mary crying blood."
The same video was also uploaded on a website https://gloria.tv on 1 April 2017, with the same description.
https://gloria.tv/post/1uNgK3BD8hhz3sfxoaEEkbA3i
There is no way to prove that this video is from Vijayawada and this event happened in 2017, however, it is definitely NOT related to the COVID-19 outbreak. So, the claim that the statues of St. Joseph, baby Jesus, and Mother Mary are shedding tears of blood in a Vijayawada church amid the Corona virus pandemic is FALSE.
