Is it a sign from God, or just a hoax?
A statue of Jesus Christ appeared to have moved its head and open its eyes during a Catholic procession in Mexico in the latest claim of a religious miracle in the predominantly Catholic Latin American nation, The Daily Mail reported.
The alleged miracle was videotaped in June last year in Saltillo, north-east Mexico but went viral only recently when it was shared on YouTube.
Some commenters believe it was a sign from God showing His presence.
However, many others contended that the alleged miracle was either an optical illusion or a hoax.
The movement of the statue's head could have been caused by the wind or human interference, they claimed.
Some commenters said there appeared to be a hand moving under the statue's tunic before the movements were seen.
"It's silly people who would swallow this story," one reader wrote.
Others said the yellow ribbon attached to Christ's cross appeared to have been pulled.
Last week, a man, from Jalisco, Mexico, claimed that a statue of the Virgin Mary he kept in his house had been crying blood for four months.
The Roman Catholic Church has largely been sceptical of reported miracles, having proven many of them as simply hoaxes.
However, it has accepted some modern events as miracles, one of them being the recovery from Parkinson's Disease of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, attributed to the late Pope John Paul II, according to The Daily Mail.
Michael O'Neill, author of "Exploring the Miraculous," said Christians believe in at least two miracles—that of Christ's incarnation and his resurrection, the two pillars on which the Christian faith rests, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported.
The most popular kind of miracle, according to O'Neill, are Marian apparitions—when Mary appears in a supernatural and corporeal way to a member of the faithful, most often with a message.
There have been about 2,500 claims of Marian apparitions throughout history, according to CNA.
