Church leaders have been studying Medjugorje phenomenon for decades

by CNS · September 20, 2024

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, holds up a book on the alleged Marian apparitions in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, during a news conference at the Vatican Sept. 19, 2024. (CNS photo/Justin McLellan)

By Cindy Wooden, CNS – Recognising the spiritual value of devotions connected to Medjugorje, but not ruling on the authenticity of the alleged apparitions or alleged messages from Mary, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith also noted that church officials have issued a “series of divergent opinions” about the phenomenon over the past four decades.

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, dicastery prefect, confirmed to reporters Sept. 19 that St. John Paul II, “in several private letters, expressed himself positively about Medjugorje and desired to visit,” but his plan to go in 1995 was scrapped after the local bishop, who had serious doubts about the alleged apparitions, pleaded with the Vatican.

Six young people, aged 10 to 16, said Mary began appearing to them in June 1981 in Medjugorje, a town in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Three of them say they still have apparitions of Mary each day, while the other three have them only on special occasions.

The alleged seers have published tens of thousands of messages they claim come from Mary, who they say revealed herself as the “Queen of Peace.” Most of the messages encourage prayer, especially the rosary, regular Mass attendance, frequent confession, regular fasting and daily Bible reading.

Ten years after the first reported apparition, when thousands of people already were travelling to the small town to meet the young people and pray, the bishops of Yugoslavia issued an interim report saying they found no proof that Marian apparitions had occurred at Medjugorje.

At the same time, the bishops encouraged better pastoral and liturgical services for pilgrims to avoid practices that are “not in agreement with the spirit of the church.”

The late Bishop Pavao Zanic of Mostar-Duvno, the diocese that includes Medjugorje, had been one of the strongest critics of events there. He repeatedly said he did not believe the apparitions were authentic, and he criticised the way the Franciscan priests at the Medjugorje parish guided the young “visionaries” and promoted Medjugorje as a place of pilgrimage.

Bishop Zanic had said he was especially upset by the way in which the authority of Mary’s “messages” had been asserted against his own episcopal authority in his dispute with the Franciscans over control of the parish.

Speaking to reporters travelling with him from Fatima, Portugal, in May 2017, Pope Francis discussed the commission that the late Pope Benedict XVI established in 2008 to study the alleged apparitions in Medjugorje.

“Three things need to be distinguished” when looking at the commission’s work, Pope Francis had said.

“About the first apparitions, when (the ‘seers’) were young, the report more or less says that the investigation needs to continue,” the pope said, according to the English translation posted on the Vatican website.

“Concerning the alleged current apparitions, the report expresses doubts,” he said. Furthermore, “personally, I am more ‘mischievous.’ I prefer Our Lady to be a mother, our mother, and not a telegraph operator who sends out a message every day at a certain time — this is not the mother of Jesus.”

Pope Francis said his “personal opinion” is that “these alleged apparitions have no great value.”

The “real core” of the commission’s report, he said, is “the spiritual fact, the pastoral fact” that thousands of pilgrims go to Medjugorje and are converted. “For this there is no magic wand; this spiritual-pastoral fact cannot be denied.”

The commission’s report was never published, but a few days after the pope mentioned it to reporters, the website Vatican Insider said commission members voted overwhelmingly to recognise as supernatural the first seven appearances of Mary in 1981.

Cardinal Fernández confirmed what Vatican Insider had reported and provided further details Sept. 19 during the news conference.

Thirteen members of the commission, he said, voted in favour of a statement affirming the “supernatural origin” of “the first seven apparitions” — those that occurred between June 24 and July 3, 1981. The commission members said that “the young people, who were psychically healthy and had not been influenced by anyone, unanimously attested to seeing Our Lady, who entrusted them with messages of conversion and penance.” One commission member voted against the statement, and another voted that it was still not possible to make a judgment.

The commission members were much more doubtful about the thousands of alleged visions that had occurred after July 4, 1981, and supposedly continue, Vatican Insider reported.

Cardinal Fernández said, however, that those doubts led only two members of the commission to vote that the later apparitions were not supernatural while 12 members voted that it was not possible to make a definitive judgment.

The Vatican Insider article was written by Andrea Tornielli, now editorial director at the Vatican Dicastery for Communication. He also had reported that all but one of the commission members voted to recommend lifting the Vatican ban on official diocesan and parish pilgrimages to Medjugorje.

The commission suggested the pope turn the town’s parish Church of St. James into a pontifical shrine with Vatican oversight. The move, the commission said, would not signify recognition of the apparitions, but would acknowledge the faith and pastoral needs of the pilgrims while ensuring a proper accounting of the financial donations pilgrims leave.

Servite Father Salvatore Perrella, former president of the Pontifical Institute Marianum and a member of the Medjugorje commission, told Catholic News Service in 2017, “For four years, the commission established by Pope Benedict investigated, interrogated, listened, studied and debated this phenomenon of the presumed apparitions of Mary” in a small town in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“The commission did not make a definitive pronouncement,” he said, but in discussing the alleged apparitions, it opted to distinguish between what occurred in the first 10 days and what has occurred in the following three decades.

“The commission held as credible the first apparitions,” he said. “Afterward, things became a little more complicated.”

As a member of the papal commission, Father Perrella said he could not discuss specifics that had not already been revealed by Pope Francis to the media. But he did not object to the suggestion that one of the complicating factors was the tension existing at the parish in Medjugorje between the Franciscans assigned there and the local bishop. In some of the alleged messages, Mary sided with the Franciscans.

Saying he recognised the spiritual fruits of pilgrimages to Medjugorje, Pope Francis basically adopted the commission’s recommendations after appointing Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser of Warsaw-Praga in February 2017 to study the best ways to provide pastoral care to townspeople and the pilgrims.

Just over a year later, Pope Francis named Archbishop Hoser the resident apostolic visitor to Medjugorje and in May 2019 the pope lifted the ban on organised pilgrimages. The archbishop died of COVID-19 in August 2021, and three months later the pope named Archbishop Aldo Cavalli, a Vatican diplomat, to the post in Medjugorje.