Mary, Mary quite contrary

Where does your image show?

On tortillas and toast;

perhaps the occasional roast –

And always with assholes in tow.

FORGIVE the terrible doggerel, but this was the first thing that sprang to mind when I learned this morning that another “image” of the Virgin Mary has made an appearance – this time in a Mexican restaurant in California.

Holy Mother of God decided to materialise on a griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant in the border town ofÂ Calexico – and promptly left the cook who first spotted herÂ in tears.

Said Brenda Martinez, who manages the family-owned restaurant:

She started to cry and didn’t want to clean the griddle anymore.

Martinez added that the cook believed that the image – another example of paradolia – had materialised to give her strength after her brother’s fatal heart attack a few days earlier.



Mary is here for us. She wants to show us her love and tell us to keep the faith.

According to this report, the griddle has now been taken off the stove and is displayed in a room behind the kitchen, which is rapidly filling up with rosaries, flowers, votive candles and other offerings left by visitors from the Imperial Valley and from Mexicali across the border.

Said Joe Acuna, who owns a landscaping firm.

I feel she is here with us. I can feel her presence.

And handyman Mike Breseno said in Spanish.

She looks real, very real.

The Rev Edward Horning, associate pastor at St. Mary Catholic Church in nearby El Centro, examined the griddle but would not say whether he thought the outline on the griddle looked like the Virgin Mary.

He opined, however:

If God wants to do something like this, he can do it.

Yeah, but does God ever do anything USEFUL?

Alberto Lopez Pulido, director and professor of ethnic studies at the University of San Diego, said that claims of apparitions, particularly of Mary, are not uncommon among Latino and Mexican Catholics.

The Catholic Church in Central and South America is Mary-centered, while the church in most of North America is more Christ-centered, Pulido said. Seeing images of Mary in public places or work spaces fulfills the need of Catholics for a personal relationship to their religion outside the church, he said, adding: