You’ve seen them auctioned off on eBay, we seen the pictures of her showing up in everything from toast tp shadows on the wall and this explosion of people claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary has got the Pope just a tad pissed. It apparently bothered him enough that he plans on publishing a criteria for the faithful to use so they won’t get taken in by charlatans. This criteria will them distinguish between the true and false claims of Virgin Mary sightings, Jesus sightings and the ever famous stigmata reports.

According to a report in the Daily Mail the Pope is concerned about this explosion

The Pope is said to be deeply concerned by the explosion in the number of pseudo-mystics who, claiming a direct line to God, set themselves against the bishops and lure the Catholic faithful out of the Church and into cults.

The handbook comes six years after the Pope – when he was simply Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – first said that the boom in such phenomena posed a risk to the unity of the Church.

The Church has been traditionally cautious in dealing with ‘private revelations’, in the belief that nothing new can be added to the Catholic faith.

But according to Petrus, an Italian online magazine, the Pope will now explicitly demand the ‘utmost rigour’ in apparitions

Source: Daily Mail

From what the Vatican yearbook of 2003 said that between 1905 and 1995 there were 295 out of which only 11 were recognized as being genuine.