Miracles at Medjugorje? The Vatican Weighs In
John Thavis is a journalist, author and speaker specializing in Vatican and religious affairs. His new book, The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age, is based on research and interviews with leading Vatican officials, experts on miracles and demonology, Catholic visionaries and others. Here is an excerpt:
Thirty-five years ago Medjugorje was a tiny hamlet in a region of subsistence farming. The apparitions of 1981 brought a stream of international visitors, but most people thought the sensation would end just as quickly as it began. It wasn't until several years later that locals realized it didn't have to end at all-as long as the apparitions kept occurring, the tour buses would continue to unload thousands of pilgrims each week. BankÂing on Mary to make daily appearances was risky, but by the late 1980s many families in Medjugorje had abandoned their tobacco fields and vineyards and invested in religious tourism. They added rooms to their homes to accommodate visitors, opened restaurants and souvenir shops, and forged connections with foreign tour operators who needed local logistical support. The fighting in Bosnia during the breakup of YugoÂslavia in the early 1990s slowed the pilgrim traffic to a trickle, but when the war ended in 1995 the visitors returned in greater numbers than ever. Larger and more modern hotels were constructed, as foreign investors realized that Medjugorje visitors, especially those from the United States and western Europe, did not necessarily want to rough it. The boom continued until the global financial crisis of 2008, when the pilgrim traffic again slowed. Small-scale operators in Medjugorje had too many empty beds, and were having trouble repaying loans. Today, the numbers are back up to previous levels.
In a sunny courtyard just outside of Medjugorje, a tiny figure held a microphone close to her lips and, in a hoarse voice, implored her listeners to âwater the heart with prayers, and see how it grows.â Fasting was important, too, and the Blessed Mother didnât want to hear excuses on that scoreâas when people claimed they got headaches or didnât feel well after skipping meals. âThatâs just a lack of will. Our Lady wants a complete conversion.â
Vicka IvankovicâMijatovic, the oldest of the Medjugorje visionaries, spoke emphatically in rapidâfire Italian, translated phrase by phrase into English for several hundred faithful. She was dressed in a worn checkered sweater, her hair pulled back in a manner that accentuated her thin and angular face. Flanked by four clerics on a wooden porch, she gazed wideâeyed at the crowd, occasionally blowing kisses in slow motion, like an aging movie star. The pilgrims waved at her, trying to catch her attention. At eight oâclock in the morning, some had been standing here for hours, waiting for this chance to meet her and listen to her words of spiritual wisdom. Vicka still claims to receive apparitions daily, usually in the privacy of her home, and every evening Maryâs new message is relayed by telephone and broadcast to pilgrims at Saint James, the parish church in Medjugorje. Now fifty years old, Vicka has experienced health problems, and twice in recent years she withdrew from all public appearances following injuries to her shoulder and back, both apparently caused when she was jostled by overly enthusiastic admirers. To the delight of tour operators, she returned in 2014 to a regular schedule of encounters, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Organizers picked a place big enough to accommodate more than a thousand people, the walled grounds of a churchârun orphanage. The setting might have suggested a connection between Marian prayer and the churchâs social activity, but in her hourâlong âtestimonyâ on this particular day, Vicka did not mention the orphanageâs programs or any other good works. The Medjugorje message prescribes prayer, not humanitarian action or charity.
"The Gospa says Satan is very much present, trying to disturb our prayers and ruin our lives! To defend against Satan, it's a good idea to keep a rosary with you, or wear a small cross or medal," Vicka told the crowd.Â
Murmurs of assent arose from the courtyard, and some held their rosaries on high. The heart of Vicka's speech came when she recounted how Mary once took her and Jakov Colo, the youngest of the visionaries, on a tour of heaven, hell, and purgatory. This was not an epic Dantesque journey, however; the whole trip lasted only twenty minutes, Vicka reÂcounted. Mary held their hands, and "there was just enough space to go through, we arrived in heaven in one second" She described heaven as "a huge space with a special kind of light, and small angels flying around." Everyone was dressed in red, yellow, or gray gowns, apparently because wearing individual street clothes would have been "too confusing." Mary urged them to look around and see how happy everyone was in heaven, which was a striking contrast with purgatory, where souls were suffering in a type of fog. As for hell, Vicka said, it was basically "a big fire" where people were transformed into animalsâa result of their own bad decisions in life, as Mary was quick to point out.
As she neared the end of her address, Vicka announced a "moment of silence for meditation," and the crowd went dutifully quiet. She made the sign of the cross, folded her hands, and, closing her eyes, began whispering prayers. After ten minutes of the silence, people standing in the warm sunshine began getting impatient; after twenty minutes a high-pitched scream pierced the stillnessâa child was apÂparently bored or frightened. As the silence persisted past thirty minÂutes, a man keeled over and remained on the ground and was soon followed by another. This phenomenon of collapsing, known as "slain in the spirit" in the Christian charismatic movement, did not seem to perturb others standing nearby.
When Vicka finally took the microphone again, it was to close her appearance with a Hail Mary. Then she waved and blew more kisses, accepting prayer petitions passed up through the crowd. "I pray for all of you!" she assured them, before disappearing inside.
The pilgrims dispersed, pausing at the roadside souvenir stands to buy a few more medals and rosaries before boarding their giant buses. Carlene Frickelton of Green Bay, Wisconsin, a repeat visitor to Medjugorje, took a moment to explain what brings her back. âItâs just such a feeling of holy, it makes you feel special,â she began, and soon she was describing how sheâd seen the sun spinning and smelled the miraculous roses on Apparition Hill. Frickelton had been standing next to the man who fell to the ground in the courtyard. As a nurse, she said, she recognized this as a spiritual event and not a medical emergency. She had noticed that just as the man collapsed a bird appeared and stayed near him for about ten minutes. The instant the bird flew away, the man rose. She took it as a sign.
When she was a girl, Frickelton said, her mother had taken her to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help just north of Green Bay, where Mary is said to have appeared to a Belgian immigrant woman in 1859. In 2010 the shrine became the first officially approved Marian apparition site in the United States. It was practically in Frickeltonâs backyard. Yet she had traveled nearly five thousand miles, to a foreign country, to pray in Medjugorje. Asked to explain why, she responded without hesitation: âMaryâs not in Wisconsin now. Sheâs here. This is going on now.â
The main street of Medjugorje was lively on a Sunday evening. The religious souvenir shops were doing a brisk business, selling almost anything that could be marked with a Medjugorje logo. The rosaries came in every possible color and style, and each store had several thousand of them on display. The locals were out walking, the women in high heels and sunglasses, virtually everyone smoking cigarettes. Restaurants featured Italian cuisine, mainly pizza, or fast food for pilgrims on the run. From a birreria loudspeaker, Tina Turner belted out, âWhatâs love got to do with it?â Young men drove up and down the street in their black Mercedes, rosaries hanging above the dashboards from rearview mirrors.
Saint James Church, with its characteristic twin towers, is the institutional side of the Medjugorje experience. Its interior is unadorned and nondescript; behind the church, an outdoor amphitheater-style worship area has been added, seating several thousand people. When the apparitions began in 1981, the Franciscan pastors were concerned that Mary was appearing on the edge of town and not at the parish's place of worship. The priests soon moved the young seers into the church, and for years the apparitions took place there, in a side room or a choir loft before evening Mass. For the Franciscans it was important to show the world that Mary's message of conversion and prayer led people back to churchânot just to a rocky hillside, but to a place where one participated in Mass and the sacraments. Today apparitions no longer occur at Saint James, but pilgrims still come here for what many describe as their most moving experience in Medjugorje.
There are more than thirty confessionals at Saint James, arranged by language groups in open-air atriums on either side of the church. The queues on this particular Sunday were at least fifteen people deepâthe kind of lines older priests remembered from a bygone era of Catholicism. Eventually each penitent entered a small room about the size of a broom closet and sat face-to-face with a priest. For many of the pilgrims, it was their first confession in years, and the sessions lasted fifteen or twenty minutes. As the lines grew longer, other priests appeared on the scene and began to hear confessions on nearby benches, next to topiary bushes.
Julie Kraemer stepped out of a door marked "English,â smiling. She had experienced an unusual confession, for the priest who heard it had not offered spiritual direction in the classic sense. Instead, he had delivered a message about Christ and God and challenged her to live it. It reminded her of how conversions are described in the Bible someone speaks the truth, and someone else changes in response to it. The priest spoke about a variety of spiritual experiences, and gave her the blessing of the Holy Spirit. "I am looking to find peace, joy, and love, and he gave me a book and a mission to do that. It was really inspiring," Julie said.
Kraemer, who lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, came to Medjugorje hoping for a moment of grace, yet was aware that, as she put it, "There have also been some spectacular fakes, where unbelievable holiness and signs and phenomena have fooled everybody.â She acknowledged that she found the Medjugorje messages a little confusing, and that its âpray, pray, prayâ theme seemed to stop short of advocating evangelical action. Nor was there much time for personal contemplation or reflection in Medjugorje. âThis is more like boot camp than retreat,â she said. âIâve been marched up and down mountains, and dragged in and out of Masses where I canât understand the language.â She was also wary of the many pilgrims who came seeking supernatural signs. Yet for all her caution, after a few days in Medjugorje, she said she was convinced that Mary was truly appearing here. As Kraemer explained, âI believe she can. I believe in a God who is powerful and can do pretty much what he wants to do.â
That belief had been challenged years earlier when her mother died, Kraemer said. âI had to figure out whether I really believed all this stuff or not. Because I was like, you know what, if itâs not really real, Iâm not going to waste my time going to Mass.â Those doubts led her to a deep study of the Bible, which she began to read in a different way. The episodes in Scripture seemed to suggest that God was using the biblical accounts of peoples and their experiences to tell a larger, transcendent story. To her they indicated a consistent author behind human events. This was a God who worked in human history, often through miracles. In the end she told herself that if you really believed in God you had to believe in miracles. âI was raised Catholic, so I always âbelievedâ in God. But this is where my brain started to believe it.â For Kraemer and many others who visit Medjugorje, a proof of credibility is found in the spiritual âfruitsâ of the pilgrimage experienceâthe return to confession and Mass, the forgiveness of past wrongs, the rediscovery of prayer and fasting, the sense of inner peace.
That argument has so far failed to convince some members of the church hierarchy, including the former and current bishops whose territory includes Medjugorje. The opposition of local diocesan authorities is rarely mentioned to pilgrims, and when it is, the words used to describe their resistance are chosen carefully. A guide from northern Italy, addressing about thirty visitors near Saint James Church, phrased it this way: âThe bishop doesnât believe Mary is working miracles here? Well, that's his theory. The poor man. The devil tempts everyone, even the bishop. You can imagine how many people he's discouraged from coming here!" The pilgrims shook their heads ruefully, apparently wonÂdering why a bishop would want to undermine such a beautiful experience. The guide continued, addressing the "absurd" notion that Medjugorje might be the devil's work. "The devil doesn't operate that way. The devil doesn't ask people to come here and pray and confess! Millions of people! What kind of strategy would that beâthe devil, leading people back to God?'"
Reprinted from The Vatican Prophecies Copyright Š 2015 by John Thavis. Published by Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
