VATICAN CITY. After many years of waiting, the Holy See’s pronouncement on the alleged Marian apparitions of Medjugorje. The Vatican’s opinion on what the convocation calls “the spiritual experience of Medjugorje” will be made known in a press conference next Thursday, September 19, at 11:30: there is no mention of “apparitions” or “visions”, much less of “supernatural phenomena”, and this is already a sign. Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernandez, trusted theologian of Pope Francis and prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; Msgr. Armando Matteo, secretary for the Doctrinal Section of the same Dicastery; Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication, will speak to give the news and explanations.
Thus, a wait will be resolved that concerns millions of faithful in the world and pilgrims who every year reach the ‘sanctuary’ in Bosnia Herzegovina – currently from a canonical and ecclesial point of view it is only a ‘parish’ – and that can now find an answer thanks also to the new norms passed by the Holy See last May on the present “supernatural events”. Cardinal Fernandez himself, at the presentation of those norms, said that on Medjugorje the Church’s investigation “is not concluded but with these norms we think it is easier to arrive at a prudential conclusion. On this and other cases”.
The new Vatican rules on alleged apparitions actually simplify because a declaration of supernaturality is not necessary, which becomes only “exceptional”, but a ‘nihil obstat’ is enough to recognize the validity of a spiritual experience. And it can be expected that on the part of the Doctrine of the Faith – whose response is in any case approved by the Pope – there will be a ‘median’ position on the experience of the six visionaries of Medjugorje, as was that of the “Ruini Commission” which studied the case at length: it recognized the value of the first phase of the “apparitions”, but branded a second phase as too influenced by a certain profiteering and business.
It is also known that Pope Bergoglio’s skepticism about the regular apparitions proclaimed by the visionaries: “Our Lady is Mother! But she is not a post office manager, to send messages every day”, he repeated several times. It is Francis himself, however, who wanted to safeguard the impressive deposit of devotion and conversions that has Medjugorje at its center, authorizing pilgrimages officially organized by dioceses and parishes and appointing as apostolic visitor the Polish archbishop Henryk Hoser, who died in 2021 due to Covid and was immediately replaced by the Italian Msgr. Aldo Cavalli. As for controversial situations, it is recalled that Father Tomislav Vlasic, former parish priest of Medjugorje and for many years spiritual guide of the visionaries, was even excommunicated after accusations of having spread “heresies”, of “manipulation of consciences” and of having had sexual relations with a nun.
The former bishop of Mostar, Ratko Peric, in whose territory Medjugorje falls, has reiterated on several occasions that he does not believe in the apparitions. Finally, journalistic investigations have accused some visionaries of having profited from the alleged apparitions by becoming owners of hotels, resorts, shops and companies that promote pilgrimages in the locality.
2024-09-17 03:15:23