Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Prayers filled the Rock Riv­er RC Pri­ma­ry School, Moru­ga, yes­ter­day as scores of Ro­man Catholics flocked to the school com­pound to view what has been de­scribed as an "Eu­charis­tic Mir­a­cle". Teach­ers, stu­dents and vil­lagers, who flocked to the school, fell on their knees in prayer af­ter a red sub­stance, re­sem­bling blood, be­gan drip­ping from a wood carv­ing of the Holy Eu­charist. With­in hours, a pud­dle of red liq­uid had formed at the base of the chal­ice. Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Clifton de Couteau, and two Ro­man Catholic priests-Fa­ther An­tho­ny Baskar and Fa­ther Karuna Ku­mar-ar­rived at the school with­in an hour. A pic­ture of the Vir­gin Mary was set up on a desk with two light­ed can­dles, while a wood­en carv­ing of Christ on the Cross was placed next to the "bleed­ing" Eu­charist.

The red flu­id was first ob­served around 10.45 am in the Stan­dard Two class­room. Teacher Er­ic Lewis said his pupils was hav­ing re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion as their first les­son and in­stead of speak­ing about Ad­vent (Christ­mas) he de­cid­ed to speak about the Eu­charist, which Ro­man Catholics be­lieve to be the the body of Je­sus Christ. He said: "I want­ed to find out how much peo­ple knew about the Eu­charist. I told my stu­dents the chal­ice rep­re­sent­ed a cup of the blood of Christ and the host rep­re­sent­ed the body of Christ. "I asked my pupils if they had ever seen it and one of them told me there was a wood carv­ing of the Eu­charist in my cup­board," Lewis re­called. He said he took out the carv­ing, hung it up in the class­room and then left to speak to the prin­ci­pal. Af­ter re­cess, he said, he re­turned to class and no­ticed some­thing was dif­fer­ent with the Eu­charist.

"At first I thought some­body put paint on it and I got an­gry but when I climbed up and looked at it, I re­alised that some­thing, look­ing like blood, was drip­ping down the sides. I touched it and smelt it and it smelt like blood," Lewis said. Say­ing he was al­ways like "Doubt­ing Thomas," the teacher took sam­ples of the flu­id to be test­ed. "I tru­ly be­lieve this is a sign for us in Moru­ga to have faith. Je­sus is show­ing his pow­er in this way," Lewis said. He said even if no­body be­lieved the flu­id was blood, the in­ci­dent had reaf­firmed his be­lief in Christ. De Couteau said he ar­rived at the school im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter hear­ing of the "blood-flow­ing chal­ice."

He added: "This is not un­usu­al be­cause some­time ago, we al­so heard about the Hin­du mur­tis drink­ing milk.

There is a young man who has tak­en sam­ples so we shall know whether it is blood-hu­man or an­i­mal." Asked whether he be­lieved the phe­nom­e­non is a sign of bad times, De Couteau said: "I don't want to the­o­rise. This is a strange phe­nom­e­non that peo­ple go all over the world to see." Fr Baskar said he too was baf­fled. He said mir­a­cles of­ten hap­pened and the ap­pear­ance of blood could be an in­di­ca­tion that Je­sus would come to pu­ri­fy and cleanse. Mem­bers of the Liv­ing­stone Prayer Group, in­clud­ing Berna­dine Alphon­so, Di­anne Ay­ers and Yvonne Ra­goo, knelt in prayer while pupils were tak­en in groups to wit­ness the phe­nom­e­non. This is the sec­ond time a phe­nom­e­non has been wit­nessed at Moru­ga. In re­cent months there have been re­ports that stu­dents of the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School were be­ing af­fect­ed by evil spir­its which gave them su­per-strength and the abil­i­ty to climb walls.