Catholics who claim they have seen the Virgin Mary will be forced to remain silent about the apparitions until a team of psychologists, theologians, priests and exorcists have fully investigated their claims under new Vatican guidelines aimed at stamping out false claims of miracles.

The Pope has instructed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office of the Inquisition, to draw up a new handbook to help bishops snuff out an explosion of bogus heavenly apparitions.

The Roman Catholic Church has told a disputed visionary to stop disseminating within the Archdiocese of Baltimore messages she purportedly receives from the Virgin Mary.

Archdiocese spokesman Sean Caine said O’Brien’s letter was prompted by confusion and anxiety among the faithful stemming from the heightened apocalyptic language in a recent ‘vision’ by Gianna Sullivan.

Twenty years after a woman said the Virgin Mary appeared to her, hundreds still attend Our Lady of the Rock gatherings in the Mojave. Despite disavowal by the church, followers say they draw comfort.

Officials at Notre-Dame-du-Laus church say that after four months of daily apparitions starting in May 1664, the Virgin Mary asked Rencurel to build a church and a house to receive priests.

At least 50 people have lost their sight after staring at the sun hoping to see an image of the Virgin Mary, according to reports.

An auction for a pebble bearing an apparent image of the Virgin Mary has prompted a miraculous response with bids last night approaching $30,000.

A woman who claims that the Virgin Mary has been appearing in a pine tree at her Surrey home for over 20 years has been dismissed as a fraud by the Vatican.

A silhouette on a tapestry at St. Brendan Catholic Church in Westchester is drawing throngs of people who believe it is an apparition of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.

A 17-year-old Benoni girl – who claims to have seen the mother of Jesus – is telling her pilgrims to look into the setting sun to witness a beautiful miracle. But a renowned medical doctor, with a lifetime of experience, says people should never look into the sun with the naked eye.

The Catholic Church has told Benoni teenager Francesca Zackey to stop blessing pilgrims after a woman severely damaged her eyes.

A statue of the Virgin Mary shipped overseas to a Central Florida business has grabbed the attention of the Orlando Catholic Diocese and groups of worshippers after it apparently shed a black tear inside the store.

It started as one drip from the ceiling of a freezer at Morton Thrifty Foods grocery store. Now it has become quite the sanctuary for a lot of Catholic believers.

Virginia Kimball’s research has plumbed not just scripture but ancient traditions — extra-biblical writings, hymns, and prayers from Christianity’s infancy — to discover what the earliest Christians believed about the woman they considered the mother of God.

Holy figures have been perceived in bricks, wooden logs, trees, sandwiches, eggs, a tortilla and so on. The phenomenon is so common that scientists have given it a name: pareidolia, the perception of patterns where none are intended.

Drivers zooming by a highway overpass may only see a tree stump, but hundreds of Roman Catholics who believe they see an image of the Virgin Mary there consider it worth a pilgrimage.