Une Minute avec Marie
Faire connaître et aimer Marie
For devotees of Medjugorje, shifting attitudes in the Church on the phenomenon only confirm what they already believe: that the small town in Herzegovina is a place where heaven meets earth and wondrous things happen through the intercession of the Mother of God.
Ever since 1981, when six local children reported that they had seen the Blessed Virgin Mary, Irish people have been amongst the first visitors to the town. Devotion to the Mother of God as Our Lady of Medjugorje has been popular in Ireland and it has inspired numerous prayer groups around the country. Anecdotally, many of those going forward for priesthood and religious life also attribute the flowering of their vocation to Medjugorje. The success of the Community Cenacolo in Medjugorje helping people suffering from crippling addictions has also led many people to associate the town with healing and helping people in desperate circumstances to get their lives back.
The ongoing nature of Medjugorje makes it difficult for Church authorities to make a definitive judgement on whether or not what is occurring is supernatural and, therefore, worthy of belief. Yet, the four basic messages of prayer, peace, fasting and penance are entirely consistent with the Catholic Faith.
Pope Francis said that he believed that the original apparitions more than three decades ago deserve further study, but also stressed the need to distinguish between the two sets of apparitions, referencing a report submitted to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by a commission set up to study the apparitions by Benedict XVI in 2010. “The first apparitions, which were to children, the report more or less says that these need to continue being studied,” he said, but as for “presumed current apparitions, the report has its doubts.”
Pope Francis also pointed to the fact that the “real core” of the commission’s report, is “the spiritual fact, the pastoral fact” that thousands of pilgrims go to Medjugorje and are converted. “This spiritual-pastoral fact cannot be denied.”
The spiritual fruits of the pilgrimages, he said, are the reason why he appointed Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser of Warsaw-Praga to study the best ways to provide pastoral care to townspeople and the pilgrims. Archbishop Hoser has said that “Medjugorje is an international reference point for prayer where extraordinary spiritual fruits can be touched by hand.”