FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. – Cruz Jacinto found her faith in God in a 2-inch blob of chocolate, and she hasn’t even tasted it. Jacinto is a kitchen worker at Bodega Chocolates’ new store in Fountain Valley. On Monday, she showed up at work and found that a figurine had formed during the weekend under a drippy vat of dark chocolate in the test kitchen.

Jacinto pulled a tattered picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe from her pocket and held it next to the chocolate clump.

“They’re identical!” she said in Spanish and rushed to show her co-workers.

It was just the sign she needed. And it seems to be what nearly 100 others – who have flocked to see the image of the saint – needed, too.

Saturday, the figurine was perched in the center of a glass table surrounded by scented candles, roses and boxes of gourmet treats. Jacinto has been among the throng who have visited and prayed to the chocolaty idol since the shrine was set up near the gourmet chocolate shop’s front door on Wednesday.

“I can’t believe it,” said Miguel Chapa, 32, who was cutting hedges in the business park Friday and went inside to see why a crowd had formed. “It looks just like her. I can feel it.”

Chapa said he planned to bring his wife and 4-year-old daughter to the shrine after work so they could feel it, too.

But this chocolate figure is particularly miraculous, said Martucci Angiano, owner of Bodega Chocolates. Chocolate that drips from the vat usually falls flat onto a sheet of wax paper.

This is the first time Angiano has ever seen it dry and piled high.

The tiny figure is wide at the bottom and tapers round at the top, forming what looks like the body of a woman with her head bowed to the right, cradling a baby. As the confection dripped, it hardened into layers that resemble a flowing veil and a gown.

“Looking at it, it’s like, ‘Wow! It really looks like the Virgin Mary,”‘ Angiano said. “Do I think God did it? Yeah, I do.”

Not everyone believed the statue was a sign from God.

Larry Reneau, 39, made a midmorning pilgrimage on Friday morning to see the chocolate statue for himself.

“It’s just a piece of chocolate,” said Reneau, who was passing out born-again Christian materials outside the shop. “We have no idea what Mary looks like. It could be anything.”

But Jacinto is sure it’s the Virgin.

Before she left for work last weekend, she told a co-worker how mounting problems in her life – her grandmother was sick, her 3-year-old son was causing her trouble – were chipping away at her faith.

“Why do I have so many problems?” she asked the friend. “God can’t exist.”

Then she saw the chocolate figurine.

“This is a sign that God exists and that my life is going to change,” she said. “Just finding her has already changed me.”

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(c) 2006, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).

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PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): RELIG CHOCOLATE

AP-NY-08-19-06 1716EDT