Porco, Madonna

A saint, clairvoyant and sometime financial fraudster, whose gender evidently precludes a senior position at the Vatican bank, has been raising funds for a children's hospital on the authority of a sanguinary statue. Supposedly, the graven image of the Virgin Mary has been weeping tears of blood and issuing personal communications; however, a private investigator has claimed that the blood, mirabile dictu, is from a pig. Since the Virgin was Jewish, the manifestation of porcine lachrimosity must raise some complicated theological conundrums; and in the face of such mysteries, it is natural that the vicar of Christ on Earth should be mainly concerned with putting the Madonna in her place. Although there are "real" apparitions of the Virgin, namely those recognised by God's appointed bureaucracy of eunuchs and rapists, her proper function is to point upwards at her Son, who apparently takes care of all the gaudy stuff.