Wednesday 9 May 2012

MYSTERY OF MEDJUGORJE RISEN CHRIST STATUE

MYSTERY OF MEDJUGORJE RISEN CHRIST STATUE

 

MYSTERY OF MEDJUGORJE RISEN CHRIST STATUE

 

With liquid dripping from one knee, the bronze sculpture of the Risen Christ has been a mystery in Medjugorje since 2001. While the nature of the liquid is itself mysterious, the mystery as such has just increased, for these days the unknown substance flows from both legs of the sculpture. 

medjugorje risen christ statue sculpture liquid water oil exude drip shed
Pilgrims standing in line with handkerchiefs, ready to collect drops of the liquid that flows from the Risen Christ sculpture

Almost 11 years after one of the knees of the Risen Christ sculpture in Medjugorje first started to shed a tear-like liquid, even returning pilgrims are surprised by the sculpture these days: Now the watery substance comes from both legs.

“Yes, it is true. Water is coming from both legs now. The new drip is actually just above the knee, on the lower thigh. The new drip is stronger than the older one” film-maker and Queen of Peace Productions founder Sean Bloomfield reports from Medjugorje.

medjugorje risen christ statue sculpture liquid water oil exude drip shed 2001
The right leg of the sculpture from where liquid started dripping in 2001


“With all the people in Medjugorje now, having both knees dripping sure helps in the crowd flow!” he adds on the discussion board at where another pilgrim just back from Medjugorje likewise tells to have witnessed the substance dripping from both sculpture legs.

The sculpture has shown to be unpredictable on previous occasions as well. Several times, the dripping has stopped for extended periods of time. One such occasion in 2010 coincided with Medjugorje receiving large amounts of rain, weakening a theory that the watery substance could be rain dripping out from inside the sculpture.

On another occasion, a large group of pilgrims witnessed how the substance was suddenly red and no longer clear:
“My friend Drago who lives in Medjugorje has informed me that this past week a man took a paper napkin and reached to take a drop of oil from the Risen Christ statue. When he looked at the napkin it is reported that the napkin was full of blood. A minimum of 50 people witnessed this. Some screamed in fear and some said, “It’s a miracle”  reported by that time.


medjugorje risen christ statue sculpture liquid water oil exuding dripping shedding
Gallons of mysterious liquid have been gathered by Medjugorje pilgrims in the course of the almost 11 years when the substance has been flowing from the Risen Christ sculpture behind the outdoor altar of St. James Church

Vatican experts have been rumored to have analyzed the substance, but neither Rome nor the parish of Medjugorje have ever confirmed such analysis to have taken place.

The statue is a replica of the 277 centimeter silver sculpture “The Resurrection”, sculpted by Andrej Ajdic and presented to Pope John Paul II on the occasion of his 1996 visit to Slovenia

Medjugorje: Awaiting a verdict

 
Medjugorje
Medjugorje
Andrea TornielliVatican City
A Vatican Insider article dedicated to the work of the Committee on the apparitions of Medjugorje, presided over by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, has provoked some quite varied reactions. You can read more on one of these reactions by following this link:

The article stated that in addition to the positive formula (“constat de supernaturalitate”, established as supernatural) and the decidedly negative one ("constat de non supernaturalitate, “It is established that there is nothing supernatural here”), there is also an intermediate formula (“non constat de supernaturalitate”, there is nothing supernatural here). In fact, the latest available standards published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1978, the result of a decision by the former Holy Office discussed four years previously, only covers the first and third formulations set out above. The first case gives an affirmative answer to the question of supernatural events. In the second case ("no constat de ...") the answer is negative.

It was recalled that on the eve of his appointment as prefect of the Congregation of Saints in 2008, the then secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Angelo Amato, gave an interview on the subject to the Catholic newspaper Avvenire. And when asked if the "no constat de ..." could be considered to be awaiting judgment, while the "de constat non ..." represents a decidedly negative opinion, Amato said: “In the rules we are referring to, mention is only made to "constat de" and not "constat de". No mention is made to "constat de non”.”

From the standards issued in 1978, according to Amato’s explanation, it follows that the only negative formula provided is the “non constat de” one. It therefore seems inappropriate to present it as a sort of judgment on appeal. It is, instead, the negative answer to the question on whether the alleged apparition is supernatural or not.

It must be clear, however, that one cannot believe the “constat de non supernaturalitate” formula (the one that strongly backed the evidence against the existence supernatural element), to have disappeared just because it makes no reference to the rules of 1978 – which were never published. Although it is true that it is not taken into consideration (even though it was up until the last draft), it is still forms part of Church practice.  It was used for example in the case of Heroldsbach in Germany: the statement “constare de non supernaturalitate” of July 18, 1951 was then approved by Pius XII and published by L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s daily broadsheet newspaper. Another problematic case in which the formula was used is that concerning the apparitions and revelations of the Lady of All Nations in Amsterdam. On April 5, 1974 Paul VI approved the Congregation's decision to publish the negative judgment “constat de non supernaturalitate”. The notification of 1974 was proposed again in the collection “Documenta Congregationis pro Doctrina Fidei” published in 2006 (Document 22, p. 90). It is interesting to note that the apparitions in Amsterdam will be approved later by the local bishop.

But now the only negative formula cited in the standards of 1978 is “non constat de…”which is the answer to the question of whether the appearance has a supernatural element. The “non constat de…” may thus indicate a lack of moral certainty in the judges called upon to rule, or the lack of convincing evidence for a negative judgment. If however there is evidence that excludes the supernatural nature, this could again affirm the formula “constat de non supranaturalitate”, as explained to Vatican Insider by the authoritative experts that work in the Holy See.
 
As for the pronouncement on Medjugorje, the work of the commission headed by Ruini will conclude before the end of 2012. The committee will produce a document, a confidential opinion, which will be examined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This will be a reasoned and documented opinion - not a decision - that after the screening of the former Holy Office will be submitted to Pope Benedict XVI who will decide what to do; namely, whether to publish it, having the doctrinal ministry pronounce itself on Medjugorje or whether to wait a bit longer given the fact that the apparition phenomenon is not over yet.
 
However, it seems difficult to imagine the conclusions of a committee that was appointed to examine the case and express itself on the issue being locked away in a drawer. Many devotees of Medjugorje, as well as many individuals who do not believe in the authenticity of these apparitions, are waiting for the Church to make a statement in regard to this.

Wednesday 4 January 2012

Lame girl healed during apparition in Medjugorje

All the medical tests were negative when Silvia Busi fell very ill at 16. Within days, the all-normal Italian girl found herself in a wheelchair, unable to move her legs. Nine months later Silvia’s illness disappeared as suddenly as it had come about, during an apparition to Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragicevic. The gift of faith is the biggest one I got, she says.
Instantly ill and crippled for months, then just as instantly cured. Life took place in drastic turns when Silvia Busi was 16 and 17.
For nine months from October 2004 the student from Padua, Italy, was a paraplegic confined to her wheelchair, unable to walk or move her legs. Silvia’s time as an invalid ended in June 2005 on top of Apparition Hill in Medjugorje when she stood up and walked after an apparition to visionary Ivan Dragicevic.
“Until the beginning of October 2004,  I was a normal girl going to school, having friends, dancing and swimming. Suddenly, within a few days, all that was blocked, though all the medical tests were negative” Silvia Busi testified during a recent prayer meeting in Italy.
“When I found myself in a wheelchair, my family and I lived through hard and painful moments. In the following months I began losing weight, and my seizures got worse, limiting my life even more, and leading me to an emotional breakdown”.
Early on, Silvia’s mother turned to faith as the solution to her daughter’s condition. The home was Catholic but Silvia says she attended Sunday Mass only out of habit:"My mother was our strength" Silvia Busi says of her nine months in wheelchair when Silvia's mother was strengthened by a prayer group devoted to the Virgin Mary       

“My mother was our strength. Finding no answers with doctors, she turned to a priest who was very devoted to a Marian group. So we started to follow the group every Friday, along with praying the Rosary, going to Mass and Eucharistic Adoration. I followed my parents, though, only because I could not stay at home alone” Silvia Busi told.
“In May, the month dedicated to the Madonna, my mother decided to attend the group every day and not only on Friday, and at least pray the Rosary and go to Mass. At first it was not easy for me but after a few weeks, I began to feel the need to go there because only there could I feel a little peace. Not being able to do the same things as my peers, in that place I felt the weight less.”
Silvia’s decision to go to Medjugorje was as sudden as her illness and her later cure:
“On June 20, my physical therapist told me that next week she would accompany her mother to Medjugorje. I asked if I could go with them, and after three days I found myself on the bus to Medjugorje with my father. We arrived in the morning of June 24, the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, but also the anniversary of the first apparition” Silvia Busi told the attendees at the prayer meeting.

When Silvia heard that visionary Ivan Dragicvevic was to have a public apparition in the evening, she immediately decided to go there, though she thought it would be impossible to bring her wheelchair to the top of Apparition Hill. Instead, she was carried to the hilltop where she arrived at 8 pm, two hours before the apparition.


The top of Apparition Hill in Medjugorje where visionary Ivan Dragicevic has public apparitions during the Summer, and where Silvia Busi stood up  and walked on June 24th 2005
The top of Apparition Hill in Medjugorje where visionary Ivan Dragicevic has public apparitions during the Summer, and where Silvia Busi stood up and walked on June 24th 2005 ^
“That is my earliest memory of prayer really done with the heart. Those two hours flew away. Sitting next to me, my group leader told me to address the Madonna because shortly thereafter she would come down from Heaven to listen to all of us. Then I asked her for the strength to serenely accept and face a life in a wheelchair because I was seventeen, and the future terrified me so.”
“During Ivan’s apparition,  I saw a light to my left: White, beautiful, very vocal and loud but I could look at it because I did not get blinded. When I saw it, I was afraid and I lowered my eyes not to look at it but it was also good and I could not help but watch it. Thus, throughout the apparition, I always looked at this light through the corner of my eye” Silvia Busi testified.

After the apparition, Silvia’s carriers lost her, and she fell on the hard hillside stones. But Silvia did not feel the rocks, she said. Instead her healing took place:
Silvia Busi. Photo: Daniel Miot, guardacon.me
Silvia Busi. Photo: Daniel Miot, guardacon.me
“I remember it as if I was being on a soft mattress and not on those hard and sharp rocks. I also remember a very sweet voice which spoke to me and calmed me. After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and my father was crying. But for the first time in nine months, I could feel my legs, I felt I leaned on something. Then I told my father: “I am cured, I can walk!”
“There was a hand stretched out in front of me. I grabbed it and I found myself on my feet as if it were the most natural thing. I burst into tears because this was something bigger than me. I could never have imagined this. Then I started to walk. My legs were very thin but I was sure I would never fall because I felt some invisible strings that held me from behind, and I was sure that I would not fall and get hurt.”
The next morning, about five o’clock, Silvia climbed Cross Mountain to pray the Way of the Cross along with her group. When she returned from Medjugorje, only the seizures were left of her illness. For them to disappear took
another Medjugorje involvement:
“I continued to have seizures, but thanks be to God they went over. At first I was very shy and did not witness, and then I had many seizures during the day. Then Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic, a priest from Medjugorje, came to Turin for a prayer meeting and he told me to give thanks and praise to God for the gift He gave me” Silvia Busi said.
While in Medjugorje, Franciscan priest Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic got popular with locals and pilgrims alike. Silvia Busi considers Fr. Ljubo to have been instrumental in the final part of her healing
While in Medjugorje, Franciscan priest Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic got popular with locals and pilgrims alike. Silvia Busi considers Fr. Ljubo to have been instrumental in the final part of her healing
She confided to pray the Rosary and give her testimony, then thought that was it. But it was not:
“Before I went away, Fr. Ljubo prayed over me, blessed me and a few days later all the seizures disappeared. After a year I stopped taking medicine and now, thanks be to God, I am fine.”
Though Silvia Busi is now completely healed, she does not consider that the biggest gift she got:
“The greatest grace that God gave me and my family was to rediscover the grace of God, faith and conversion. The road is very long, we just started and then it continues for a lifetime. The difficulties are there and no one is immune to this but with the power of faith and prayer, you are able to overcome and deal with them” she said.
“With this conversion, it is as if God has lit a fire inside me. But as fire is being fed with wood, so faith must be nourished by prayer. And by the Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, the Rosary, reading the Bible, fasting, and confession at least once a month. With all this, the fire is not quenched, even if a little wind is blowing.”
“For me this is really the most important and beautiful in life. I pray with all my heart to every day experience more of the love of God and the Madonna which is immense, and the same for each of us.”


Source: Medjugorje Today

Interview with Fr Gabriele Amorth



Interview With: Fr Gabriele Amorth

Don Gabriele Amorth is an exorcist in the diocese of Rome and the president of honour of the Association of Exorcists that he founded in 1990, and of which he was president until the year 2000. During his stay at Medjugorje in July 2002, he gave an interview to Fr. Dario Dodig.

Fr. Dario Dodig: Don Gabriele, you are exorcist in the diocese of Rome?
Don Gabriele Amorth: I am an exorcist in Rome and president of honour of the Association of Exorcists, which I founded. In the year 2000, we celebrated its 10th anniversary. I was 75 years old and I asked someone else to take over this duty. When Bishops are 75, they are retired, so I did the same!

Don Gabriele, would you be so kind as to tell us what is exorcism?
Exorcism is a public prayer of the Church done with the authority of the Church, because it is done by a priest named by the Bishop; it is a prayer for liberation from the demon, from the evil influence of the demon or of the evil provoked by the demon.

When we speak about exorcism, can you tell us how Satan can influence Christians?
The influence of Satan is immense. Satan acts in two different ways. The ordinary action of Satan is when Satan tempts men to evil. All men, from their birth to their death, are involved in this struggle against Satan who tempts them into evil. Jesus, because He had a human nature, submitted Himself to temptation coming from Satan. Except the ordinary action, Satan also acts in an extraordinary way, which consists in provoking malign troubles, which can go on until satanic possession.

When we speak about possession, how can we defend ourselves from Satan?
We have to first speak about prevention - what to do to avoid these evils. The measures of prevention are to live in the grace of God, to be faithful to prayer and not to do works that open the door to the demon, especially not to do any occult works. There are three main works of occultism: magic, spiritism and Satanism. The one who is dedicated to these things exposes himself to the extraordinary action of the demon.

Is the influence of Satan in the world of today stronger than before, especially his influence on the youth, for example through music?
Today, Satan has free hands. This does not mean that he has more power than in the past, but the door is wide open to him. Primarily, today we live in a period of little faith. It is purely mathematical: when faith declines, superstition grows. When we abandon God, we give ourselves to practices that open the door to Satan. There is no doubt that today’s media have done much in favour of Satan, first by the immorality of certain shows, the abundance of movies showing violence, horror or sex. Except this, media have put in the first plan and have given popularity to figures of wizards and magicians, and so they give publicity to their works.

Is the exorcism the highest degree of action against Satan? Are their other means that can come before this last degree?
Conversion! The first thing that we ask from people who come to us is to live in the grace of God, to be faithful to an intense sacramental life and to the life of prayer. After this, if it is necessary, we encourage them to receive prayers of healing and of deliverance, as they are practiced in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. After a number of such prayers, the person is either already set free, or the need is evident to do the exorcism itself. Then we do the exorcism, keeping in mind that exorcism is a prayer where the result does not always come immediately. Sometimes, years of exorcism are needed for a person to be delivered.

Is the exorcism the highest form of action in the name of God?
Theoretically, yes. Nevertheless, we have to keep in mind other factors, which are very important before God. The exorcism is a prayer. Like all the prayers, it is the more efficacious the stronger the faith is. Faith has a fundamental importance. This is why we often read in the lives of saints that they have delivered people from diabolic possession without being exorcists themselves.

When we speak about Satan and satanic action, we usually have fear within us…
It is because we are not any more used to exorcism. Priests in general believe very little in the extraordinary action of Satan. If a bishop proposes to them to do the exorcism, they are frightened, as if they think: “If I leave the devil in peace, he will leave me in peace. If I fight him, he will attack me.” This is wrong. The more we fight Satan, the more he is afraid of us.

In her messages in Medjugorje, Our Lady says often that Satan is strong and she invites us to pray, to fast and to be converted.
Yes, this is true. In an Italian magazine, I had the occasion to comment on Our Lady’s messages where she speaks about Satan. She often spoke about this. She underlined that Satan is powerful and that he wants to destroy her plans. She invited us to pray, to pray, to pray.

In her messages, Our Lady spoke about the Rosary, about the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, about prayer before the Cross, and she said even that through prayer wars may be stopped.
Yes. Through prayer, we can even stop wars. I always understood Medjugorje as a continuation of Fatima. According to Our Lady’s words in Fatima, if we had prayed and fasted, there would not have been World War II. We have not listened to her and therefore there was a war. Also here in Medjugorje, Our Lady often calls to prayer for peace. In her apparitions, Our Lady always presents herself under another name to show the goal of her apparitions. At Lourdes, she presented herself as the Immaculate Conception, in Fatima as the Queen of the Holy Rosary. Here in Medjugorje, Our Lady presented herself as the Queen of Peace. We all remember the words “Mir, mir, mir” (peace, peace, peace) that were written in the sky at the very beginning of the apparitions. We see clearly that humanity is running the risk of war, and Our Lady insists on prayer and on Christian life to attain peace.

In her messages, the Queen of Peace also underlines fasting, which is a bit forgotten in the Church. She speaks about fasting according to what is written in the Gospels - that through fasting and prayer we can eliminate all influence of Satan.
This is true. First in Fatima and now here in Medjugorje, Our Lady speaks often about prayer and fasting. I think that this is very important, because contemporary men are following the spirit of consumerism. Humanity searches how to avoid any kind of sacrifice and so it exposes itself to sin. For Christian life, except prayer, we need a certain austerity of life. If there is no austerity of life, there is no perseverance in Christian life. I will give you an example - today, families fall so easily apart. They celebrate the wedding, but the couples divorce quickly. It happens because we are not used to sacrifice any more. In order to live together, we have to be able to also accept the deficiencies of others. The lack of spirit of sacrifice leads to the fact that we do not live Christian life in fullness. We see with what facility abortion is being committed, because of the lack of readiness to make a sacrifice to educate children. This is how the first reason of marriage is being destroyed. This is because there is no practice of making sacrifice. Only if we are used to sacrifice ourselves, we will be able to live Christian life.

The fruits of Medjugorje are numerous. Conversions are numerous. A theologian says that here, heaven came down on earth. Our Lady invites us to abandon ourselves totally to her so that she may lead us to Jesus. Isn’t this the essential for Christian life?
No doubt! Medjugorje is really a place where one learns to pray, but also to sacrifice oneself, where people are converted and change their lives. The influence of Medjugorje is worldwide. It is enough to think about how many prayer groups came about thanks to the inspiration of Medjugorje. I also lead a prayer group, which was founded in 1984. This group is already 18 years old. We live one afternoon as it is lived in Medjugorje. There are always 700 or 750 people. We always meditate on Our Lady’s message of the 25th of the month and I always read this message in relation to a sentence from the Gospel, because Our Lady does not say anything new. She invites us to do what Jesus thought us to do. Groups like mine exist all over the world.

Is it true that Medjugorje is a “big mouthful” for Satan?
Surely. Medjugorje is a fortress against Satan. Satan hates Medjugorje because it is a place of conversion, of prayer, of transformation of life.

Would you give us your advice?
The “testament” of Mary, her last words written in the Gospel, are “Do whatever he tells you”. Here in Medjugorje, Our Lady insists again that the laws of the Gospel are respected. The Eucharist is at the centre of all Medjugorje groups, because Our Lady always leads to Jesus. This is her main concern: to make us live the words of Jesus. This is what I wish to everyone. May the Immaculate intercede for you, so that the blessing of God may descend on all of you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!

Thank you, Father, and may God give you a long life!

SCIENTIFIC TESTS ON THE VISIONARIES



Marija and Ivan undergo medical tests during apparitions

Marija Pavlović-Lunetti and Ivan Dragićević photographed wearing monitoring apparatus during a series of intricate medical/scientific tests which they underwent in Medjugorje in 2005.

Speaking about the tests Marija said:
“Our Lady did not mind the tests at all. She neither forbids them nor advises participation in them. We have total free will in life, and so too in this matter. It is up to us to decide if we shall participate in the tests or not. I just hope that, through them, we shall bring more hearts closer to Our Lady. That’s why I agreed to the tests. But, I have to say that I am a bit tired of all these researches. I just wonder what else people need in order to accept the truth.”

On the tests Ivan said simply: “I agreed to the tests because the Church asked me to cooperate with this.”

No other claim of supernatural manifestation has ever undergone such detailed medical and scientific analysis as Medjugorje.



The visionaries are normal and healthy

The visionaries of Medjugorje are by far the most scientifically examined seers ever in the history of Christian mysticism. The decade-long duration of the apparitions, along with the modern advancements in medical-scientific knowledge and equipment, have allowed doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and physicians, to study the visionaries and their apparitions as closely and accurately as never before.
Among the many tests and examinations that the visionaries have subjected themselves to, four major ones stand out. Performed by independent teams of scientists in 1984, 1985, 1998 and 2006 their results confirm and complement each other.
The visionaries have reacted to the scientific interest in their experiences by willful cooperation, but also with a spirit of detachment. Only one among the many scientific conclusions has really meant something to them – namely the conclusion that they are absolutely healthy, normal people who only happen to have a most  unusual experience.
The first doctor to arrive at this conclusion was psychiatrist Dzudza Mulija. This she did as early as June 29th 1981, the sixth day of the apparitions. She worked in the psychiatric wing of the hospital in Mostar and met the visionaries when local Communist police officers brought them to see her. She was referring to the Communists when, according to visionary Vicka Ivankovic, she ended her examinations by telling the seers:
“It is the people who brought you here that are insane. You are absolutely normal.” (1)
Next in line was Dr. Nikola Bartulica, a psychiatrist who was born in Croatia, but lived in the United States when he came to Medjugorje in October 1981 and later in 1989. During his first encounter with the visionaries he studied Vicka for almost two hours, all the while Vicka did not know that her conversation partner was a medical specialist.
“When a psychiatrist hears that a person has visions, he first wonders if that person is mentally healthy. So I asked Vicka what did she see, hear, how did she react. She answered spontaneously, without fear or hesitation, and you could see that this was a determined, completely normal persoon. In psychiatry, you can quickly determine if a person is sincere”, Dr. Bartulica later concluded. (2)
Talking about all of the visionaries, the Croatian psychiatrist added:
“It does not take an expert though to tell that the children were normal, sincere, and that their experience was not invented.” (2)
The Italian doctor Lucia Capello examined the visionaries for three days in February and March 1984.
“They appeared to be discreet, well-mannered, careful in their dress and in their speech and absolutely mindful of the surroundings in which they found themselves. Their behavior seemed to conform perfectly with that of young people of their own age”, she concluded. (1)
In 1998 the third major scientific examination of the Medjugorje visionaries and their apparitions was undertaken by a team of Austrian and Italian experts headed by Fr. Andreas Resch, an Austrian priest and professor of clinical psychology and paranormology at the Pontificial Lateran University in Rome. Fr. Resch and his team concluded that “the seers enjoy optimal psychophysical health”.
Referring to the state of complete disconnection from the outside world that the visionaries enter during apparitions, a condition known throughout Christian history as spiritual ecstacy, the team concluded that “ecstacy is not a psychopathologic event and that after 18 years of daily apparitions it has not provoked any damage to the psychophysical health of the seers”. (3)
In other ways, too, the so-called Medjugorje 3 Commission confirmed the conclusions of the first scientific commission that studied the Medjugorje visionaries.  This group of scientists was headed by the French doctor Henri Joyeux who brought to Medjugorje a crew of medical specialists along with a battery of modern equipment back in 1984. Theirs was the first among the four major medical-scientific examinations of the Medjugorje visionaries.
“The visionaries are psychologically healthy, without neurosis and hysteria. Their ecstacies are not a pathological phenomenon. (…) It is a functinal phenomenon that facilitates a valuable experience which is coherent, healthy, enlivening and, to the visionaries, human as well as spiritual”, Dr. Joyeux wrote in conclusion. (1)
“They are country youngsters who do not appear to need either a psychologist or a psychiatrist. They dress in the normal fashion of other young people of their country. They give no impresssion of being bigoted, each seeming to have his or her own personality; we felt at ease with all of them: they are neither geniuses nor simpletons; they are not being manipulated but remain free and healthy in mind and body”, Dr. Henri Joyeux also wrote. (1)
“The phenomenon is scientifically inexplicable. The visionaries of Medjugorje are not drop-outs or dreamers, nor are they tired or anxious; they are free and happy, at home in their country and in the modern world. The ecstacies are not pathological, nor is there any element of deceit”, Dr. Joyeux later said before concluding:
“No scientific discipline seems able to describe these phenomena”. (4)
Though this is so, the many scientists have long been able to point out with certainty what the apparitions in Medjugorje are not about. That is: The alternative explanations known to science have all been ruled out.
Sources:
(1) Dr. Henri Joyeux and Fr. RenĂ© Laurentin: “Scientific and Medical Studies of the Apparitions at Medjugorje”, Veritas Publications 1987
(2) Medjugorje Tribune # 1, January 2007
(3) Paul Baylis with Dr. Marco Margnelli: “The works of the third committee on the seers of Medjugorje”, quoted here from Marian Times
(4) Mary Craig: “Spark From Heaven”, Ave Maria Press 1988



ALTERNATIVE THEORIES HAVE BEEN EXCLUDED

When it comes to apparition experiences, a whole range of alternative explanations are well-known to science. In taking on two among the most obvious – fraud and hallucination – the Croatian psychiatrist Dr. Bartulica concluded in 2006, starting out with his impressions of visionary Vicka Ivankovic when he studied her in the 1980s:
“You have to ask yourself if it is possible that she is deceiving us. The answer is that it might be possible, but if that was the case, all the six seers are capable of this simultaneously for a period of 25 years! That in itself would be a phenomenon! And anyway that cannot be, because it has been established scientifically that their ecstasies are authentic. Besides, there is no such case in the history of psychiatry that six children start simultaneously hallucinating at 6:40 p.m..” , Dr. Bartulica testified. (1)
In fact, with the exception of hypnosis (which was only later ruled out with certainty) the entire collection of known alternative explanations had been excluded by independent scientists as early as 1984. This was when a French medical team headed by Dr. Henri Joyeux became the first one to deeply examine the Medjugorje visionaries with the entire battery of modern equipment known and used by medical science by that time.
Dr. Joyeux, a cancer researcher, headed a team of scientists from the University of Montpellier. The team made video and audio recordings of more than 35  apparitions and conducted a battery of tests. Among the many tests performed by the team were brain, vision, hearing, voice and cardiac function tests, using electroencephalographs, electrooculographs and other scientific devices. (2)
In their conclusions the French team of scientists excluded manipulation, epilepsy, catalepsy, dreams, hallucinations, hysteria, neurosis, pathological ecstacy, and fraud. (2)
On January 14th 1986 a French-Italian commission of scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists and theologians published the results of its investigations of the Medjugorje visionaries in a 12 point conclusion. While the nine later points were more theological in nature, the first three conclusions were strictly scientific:
“1. On the basis of the psychological tests, for all and each of the visionaries it is possible with certainty to exclude fraud and deception.
2. On the basis of the medical examinations, tests and clinical observations etc, for all and each of the visionaries it is possible to exclude pathological hallucinations.
3. On the basis of the results of previous researches for all and each of the visionaries it is possible to exclude a purely natural interpretation of these manifestations.” (3)
Dr. Enzo Gabrici, an Italian neuro-psychiatrist, examined Ivan, Vicka, Marija and Jakov for five days in April 1984. He became the first scientist to exclude hypnosis as an explanation “because in this situation, subjects are not able to remember anything while in the trance. The Medjugorje visionaries, however, remember exactly what takes place during the ecstasy, discounting the hypnosis theory”. (2)
While this conclusion relies on the visionaries to tell the truth about their experiences during the apparition, hypnosis was scientifically ruled out as an explanation in 1998. Headed by Fr. Andreas Resch, a theologian and psychologist from Institute for the Field Limits of Science in Innsbruck, Austria, among the primary purposes of the 1998 examination was to determine if the apparitions could be due to hypnosis.
Experts from Center for Study and Research on Psychophysiology of States of Consciousness in Milan, Italy, were also included in the team, and so were experts from European School of Hypnotic Psychotherapy Amisi of Milan and The Parapsychology Center of Bologna, Italy.
To determine whether the state of ecstacy experienced by the visionaries could be due to hypnosis, the examined visionaries was hypnotized. While in hypnosis the seers were led to re-experience the apparition experience by suggesting to the visionaries that they saw the Virgin Mary before them. The aim was to determine if the visionaries displayed the same physical and emotional reactions found and measured by the scientists during the real apparitions.
They did not, as it turned out:
“The hypnotically induced state of ecstasy did not cause the phenomenology of spontaneous experiences and therefore it can be deduced that the ecstatic states of spontaneous apparitions were not states of hypnotic trance”, the scientists concluded. (4)
On his own account, team leader Fr. Andreas Resch later said the results were even clearer than that:
“The experiments show a radical difference between the states of hypnosis and ecstacy. Therefore the point of view that ecstacy is a sort of hypnotic state that can be induced from the outside or automatically can be excluded”, he wrote seven years after the experiments. (5)
With hypnosis also excluded, scientific experts had ruled out all the known alternative explanations of the apparition phenomenon. And along the way of determining for sure what the visionaries do not experience, the scientists had also determined the charateristics of spiritual ecstacy. Some of them had even concluded that this state of complete disconnection from the exterior world is what the visionaries actually experience.
Sources:
(1) Medjugorje Tribune # 1, January 2007
(2) Dr. Henri Joyeux and Fr. RenĂ© Laurentin: “Scientific and Medical Studies of the Apparitions at Medjugorje”, Veritas Publications 1987
(3) Dr. Luigi Frigerio et al: “Dossier Scientifico su Medjugorje”, Paina 1986
(4) “Research on the Visionaries”, results from the Medjugorje 3 Group, quoted here from Medjugorje Parish Bulletin # 109, January 27th 1999
(5) Fr. Andreas Resch: “Die Seher von Medjugorje im Griff der Wissenschaft”, Resch Verlag 2005

Tuesday 3 January 2012

An early depiction of Our Lady of Medjugorje. The original of this painting
 is in the new parish rectory building in Medjugorje

Sunday 1 January 2012

MEDJUGORJE: an overview and synopsis of the phenomenon


MEDJUGORJE: an overview and synopsis of the phenomenon


020  MEDJUGORJE IN 1981


Since 24th June 1981 a truly astonishing phenomenon has been taking place in Medjugorje, a village in a mountainous region of Bosnia-Hercegovina, just south-east of Mostar. It is claimed that the mother of Jesus, traditionally known in the Catholic Church as Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been appearing to six young people and giving ‘messages’ to the world. ‘Messages’, or more correct perhaps, encouragement, not just for those of the Catholic faith, but for all of humanity. In Our Lady’s words:

I have come to tell the world that God exists. He is the fullness of life and to enjoy this fullness and peace you must return to God.

                                                        Medjugorje circa 1981 

019             
St James' Church, Medjugorje  viewed from the fields circa 1981 

 
Drawing of Medjugorje as it looked at the beginnings of the apparitions

On June 24, 1981, at about 6pm, six young parishioners from Medjugorje: Ivanka Ivankovic, Mirjana Dragicevic, Vicka Ivankovic, Ivan Dragicevic, Ivan Ivankovic and Milka Pavlovic, saw on the hill Crnica (on the place called Podbrdo) an apparition, a white form with a child in her arms. Surprised and scared, they did not approach.

The next day at the same time, June 25, 1981, four of them, Ivanka Ivankovic, Mirjana Dragicevic, Vicka Ivankovic and Ivan Dragicevic, felt strongly drawn towards the place where, the day before, they saw the One who they had recognised as Our Lady. Marija Pavlovic and Jakov Colo joined them. The group of Medjugorje visionaries was formed. They prayed with Our Lady and talked to Her. From that day onward, they had daily apparitions, together or separately. Milka Pavlovic and Ivan Ivankovic have never seen Our Lady any more.


No one expected it. No one organized it. No one was leading it. The story about the first days of the apparitions in Medjugorje is a story about six young ordinary people and the events that transformed them forever – immediately believed by the local people, but also from the onset subjected to fierce opposition from the ruling Communists in what was then Yugoslavia.

With the local Franciscan priests initially skeptical, fearing the claim of apparitions to be a hoax perpetrated by the Communists with the aim of damaging the Church, the visionaries found themselves in the midst of three very different reactions. But whether questioned by priests or policemen, their answer was the same: “We see what we see, and the one we see is the Virgin Mary.”



 

Medjugorje visionaries in June 1981
(left to right)

Ivan Dragićević, born May 25, 1965
Marija Pavlović, born April 1, 1965 
Mirjana  Dragićević, born March 18, 1965
Ivanka lvanković, born April 21, l966
Vicka lvanković, born July 3, 1964
Jakov ÄŒolo, born June 3, 1971


83CHIES1
St James' Church Medjugorje circa 1981


83PANOR2                  Medjugorje circa 1981



THE FIRST DAYS


June 24th 1981


Ivanka Ivankovic in the early 1980s. She was the first visionary to see the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje

The Virgin Mary first appeared in Medjugorje on June 24th 1981, on the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist, in his day the proclaimer of the coming Messiah. Because it was a Feast Day, the local children were free from school as well as from work in the fields where farmers grew grapes and tobacco.

15 years old Ivanka Ivankovic and 16 years old Mirjana Dragicevic spent their day off together. In the late afternoon they went for a walk. Passing by the local hill called Podbrdo, Ivanka looked toward the hill. Suddenly, about 200 meters up the hill, she saw a luminous figure whom she immediately recognized to be the Virgin Mary.
“Mirjana, look, the Madonna!” Ivanka exclaimed. But Mirjana, a bright city girl from Sarajevo visiting her family in Medjugorje, paid no attention to her friend. She waved her hand and continued to walk.

“Come on! Do you think Our Lady would appear to us?” Mirjana said.
Mirjana’s dismissal was stronger than Ivanka’s belief in what she saw, and so the girls walked on. Next they met 12 years old Milka Pavlovic, a shepherd. She asked the two older girls to join her and bring back the sheep.

When they returned to the foot of the hill, Ivanka again saw the Virgin, this time holding an infant on her arm. Then Milka and Mirjana also looked and saw her. Though they did not know exactly how the Virgin looked, something inside them made them know for sure it was her. The girls felt joy and fear at the same time, a feeling they had never had before.

Before going for their walk by the hill Ivanka and Mirjana had left a note to their friend Vicka Ivankovic, aged 16. Having taken the left exam of the school year that day Vicka was tired when she returned form Mostar, the nearest big city around. When Vicka woke up, she went to look for Ivanka and Mirjana. Vicka soon found the two girls and Milka standing on the road and looking to the hill.


Mirjana Dragicevic in the early 1980s. Her faith was always strong but first she could not believe the Virgin had come

“Look up there: Our Lady” Mirjana proclaimed. Now it was Vicka’s turn not to believe. She did not even bother to look. “What do you mean, Our Lady? What is the matter with you?” Vicka said. She ran away, frightened. On her way back home she lost the slippers she was wearing.

But Vicka never made it all the way home. Instead she met 20 years old Ivan Ivankovic and 16 years old Ivan Dragicevic. They had been picking apples, and the younger Ivan asked Vicka if she wanted some. Yet Vicka had no time to think of apples.
“Ivan, they said Our Lady has appeared up there. Let us go there, you and me – I am afraid” Vicka told the younger Ivan.
When the three returned to the hill, Ivan repeated Vicka’s reaction.
“Do you see anything?” Vicka asked him. But there was no Ivan around to answer her. When Vicka turned, she saw Ivan running away, jumping over a fence and losing all his apples. The other Ivan was still there.
“I see something completely white, turning” he said. “I see Our Lady” Milka exclaimed. Vicka saw a dark hair and a gown. She also saw the Virgin covering and uncovering something, recognized as the others as the Baby Jesus.
The Virgin waved at the youngsters, trying to have them come closer. “She is calling us, but who is going to go?” they asked each other. None of them dared, and they all went home, Vicka first, then the others after her.



Vicka Ivankovic in the early days of the apparitions. Frightened at first, she soon turned into the most fearless witness of the events at Medjugorje

Back home the young people were teased and slightly ridiculed. “You should have caught her”, Milka’s uncle said. “Did they send greetings to your mothers and fathers?”. “Maybe they saw a flying saucer”, one of Vicka’s sisters said.
The visionaries did not pay attention. “Let them talk” was all they thought.
Sources:
Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje”, 3rd edition, Informativni Centar “Mir” Medjugorje 2010, these excerpts based on interviews with Ivanka and Vicka from 1982 and 83.
Fr. RenĂ© Laurentin: “Learning From Medjugorje”, The Word Among Us Press 1988
Mary Craig: “Spark From Heaven”, Ave Maria Press 1988



June 25th 1981


Milka Pavlovic, visionary for only one day, on the Hill of Apparitions in the early 1980s. It would take years for her to come to terms with her cross of having seen the Virgin Mary only once, and never again


Affected by the teasings from his fellow villagers and telling himself that “this is only for children”, 20 years old Ivan Ivankovic did not follow the other visionaries when, the next day around the same time, they returned to the hill  to see if the Virgin Mary would appear again. Neither did 12 years old Milka Pavlovic return: To make sure that she did not, her mother had sent her off to work in the most distantly located vineyard that the Pavlovic family owned.

Instead of them two other youngsters went along when Ivanka, Mirjana  and Vicka took off to see what would happen: Milka’s 16 years old sister Marija and little Jakov Colo, aged only 10. If the Virgin re-appeared, Vicka had promised to go and pick up both of them.

The visionaries did not know what to expect. “If we see her, that is okay. If we don’t, what can we do?” Vicka summed up their attitude. The Virgin did re-appear, and once again Ivanka saw her first, then Vicka and Mirjana. Immediately Vicka recognized her face, eyes, hair and gown. During the first days of the apparitions, the visionaries were not yet in complete ecstacy, as if drawn from the world, when they had the Virgin before them. And so Vicka went to call Marija and Jakov who came immediately.



Marija Pavlovic in the early 1980s. Having finished her work in the kitchen, on day 2 she was allowed by her mother to follow the visionaries instead of her younger sister, Milka. "Marija can go. One of you is enough", their mother said


With her hand the Virgin motioned the visionaries, trying to have them come closer, and unlike the day before, the visionaries responded by rushing up the hill. On top of it they met Ivan who had come up another way along with some of his friends.
“It was not like walking on the ground. Nor did we look for the path. We simply ran toward her. In five minutes we were on the hill – as if something had pulled us through the air. I was afraid. I also was barefoot, but no thorns had scratched me”, Vicka recalled during an interview  in March 1982.

The visionaries ran through thorn shrubs. Two adults and some more children followed them, more than 15 people all in all. They later testified that they were amazed  by the speed of  the visionaries whom they were far from able to keep pace with. One of the men was Mirjana’s uncle who later testified: “It takes at least 12 minutes to get up there, yet they did it in two. It scared me to death”.


When the visionaries were about two meters away from the Virgin, they felt as if they were thrown to their knees. In Vicka’s words “Jakov was thrown kneeling into a thorny bush, and I thought he would be injured. But he came out of it without a scratch”. It was the first little miracles among the countless numbers that were later to take place in Medjugorje.

For the first time the visionaries spoke to the apparition before them. Ivanka asked about her mother who had died a few months earlier, and was greatly consoled to hear that she was in Heaven with the Virgin.



Ivan Dragicevic in the early 1980s. Not particularly religious by the time the apparitions began and very, very shy throughout his childhood, people who knew him found it very much unlikely that he would ever take part in inventing visions of the Virgin or seek out the attention bestowed on the visionaries from the day the apparitions began


Mirjana complained that no one would believe the visionaries, just be telling them that they were crazy. According to Vicka, the Virgin Mary just smiled in response.
Aside of this, the visionaries prayed seven Our Fathers with the Virgin. “We were praying because we did not know what else to do. We were crying a little and praying a little” Vicka later explained.

The vision lasted between 10 and 15 minutes. Then, according to the visionaries, the Virgin Mary left them with the words “Go in God’s peace”.
Marveled by the otherworldly beauty of the woman before them, but also confused and full of many questions, it would take a little while until the seers were able to feel the peace of God. On the contrary, Ivanka wept all the way down the hill. Marinko Ivankovic, a 38 years old mechanic, was unable to console her when he met her and the other visionaries at the foot of Podbrdo.

Feeling that the priests should be informed, Marinko went to the church, only to find the parish priest, Fr. Jozo Zovko, out of town – and realizing that his assistant pastor, Fr. Zrinko Cuvalo, wanted nothing to do with the story. Disappointed at this, Marinko went back and talked to the seers himself.

This was when Marinko started thinking to himself that maybe the youngsters were actually telling the truth. He knew Ivanka very well and considered her a level-headed, studious girl. He also knew the Pavlovic sisters, Marija and Milka, as they used to come by to help his wife, Dragica, in doing the dishes. The more he listened to them, the more he believed.

Sources:
Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje”, third English edition, Informativni Centar “Mir” Medjugorje 2010
Fr. RenĂ© Laurentin: “Learning From Medjugorje”, The Word Among Us Press 1988
Stipe Cavar: “The First Months of the Apparitions in Medjugorje”, Ziral 2000
Mary Craig: “Spark From Heaven”, Ave Maria Press 1988

June 26th 1981


By the third day, news of the apparitions had spread far beyond Medjugorje, and in the afternoon about 3,000 people gathered on the hill. They did not only come from the surrounding villages and towns, but from even greater distances, too. They were rewarded by seeing a brilliant light that shone on the village and the entire area.


Jakov Colo with Vicka Ivankovic in the early 1980s. "Now when I have seen her, I can die, I don't mind", Jakov said upon his first apparitions. He was 10 years old


Among the followers was 12 years old Jozo Ostojic, well-known in the area for having recently set a new regional record for the 100 meter dash. Now he, too, became a witness of the amazing speed by which the visionaries rushed up the hill, as if flying or pulled by an invisible force, just like they had the day before.
The one who amazed the young aspiring athlete the most was 10 years old Jakov Colo:
“Jakov was two years younger than me, and not really athletic; normally I can outrun him by a huge distance. But on that day, I couldn’t come close to keeping up with him. He and the others seemed to be flying up that hill. There was no path, just rocks and thornbushes, but all six of them were moving at an incredible speed, bounding from rock to rock, taking enormous strides. I was running as fast as I could, but falling further and further behind, and so were the grown men running with me”, Jozo Ostojic later testified.


Even to this day, the path up Apparition Hill is covered by rocks and stones, big and small. But on the second, third, fourth, and fifth day, according to numerous eyewitnesses, the visionaries seemed to be flying up the hill at great speed


When the vision had begun, Vicka sprinkled holy water on the apparition saying “If you are Our Lady, stay with us. If you are not, be gone!”. Vicka did not spare the water, but emptied the entire bottle on the apparition. According to the visionaries, the Virgin Mary smiled beautifully. They understood her smile to indicate her pleasure with this little test.
The heat was intense, and the throngs of people only added to it. Mirjana and Ivanka even fainted and had to be secluded and revived.

The apparition was a long one, lasting about 30 minutes. The visionaries asked the Virgin a number of questions, among them why she had come to their village.
“I have come because there are many true believers here. I have come to convert and reconcile the whole world”, the Virgin Mary replied.
“Why are you appearing to us? We are no better than any others”, one of the visionaries said. “I do not necessarily choose the best”, the Virgin humorously answered.
When the apparition had ended and people were descending the hill, the Virgin Mary  suddenly re-appeared to Marija only. To Vicka, walking a bit behind Marija, it looked as if she was being tossed to the side. A local man, Ante Kozina, was about 15 feet behind Marija when she suddenly turned right, looked at the sky, stretched her arms, and knelt down. The people in the crowd behind her also stopped, riveted. Ten minutes later Marija returned to this world and looked up. Her face was bathed in tears, and she was unable to stand on her feet to begin with.

“I am 100 percent sure something supernatural happened to that girl”, Ante Kozina later testified.


The plain wooden cross erected on the spot where Marija Pavlovic saw the Virgin Mary in tears on June 26th


According to Marija, the experience had been “overwhelming”, and immediately had made her commit herself completely to the Virgin Mary’s request: She had seen the Virgin in front of a bare cross formed of all colours of the rainbow. In tears she had been urging:
“Peace, peace peace! Be reconciled! Only peace. Make your peace with God and among yourselves. For that, it is necessary to believe, to pray, to fast, and to go to confession”.
Sources:
Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje”, third English edition, Informativni Centar “Mir” Medjugorje 2010
Fr. Janko Bubalo: “A Thousand Encounters with The Blessed Virgin Mary in Medjugorje”, Friends of Medjugorje Chicago 1987
Randall Sullivan: “The Miracle Detective”, Grove Press 2004
Mary Craig: “Spark From Heaven”, Ave Maria Press 1988


June 27th 1981

On the fourth day of the apparitions, the local Communist authorities intervened for the first time. In the afternoon the visionaries were summoned to the police station in Citluk, the municipality capital. Here the visionaries maintained that they had seen the Virgin Mary.

Afterwards they were sent to be examined by the doctor on duty, Dr. Ante Vujevic. However, he only got to examine Ivan and was about to take a look at Vicka when the time of the apparition drew close and made the visionaries leave and go back to Medjugorje. Dr. Vujevic found nothing amiss in his examination of Ivan but aside from that he refrained from drawing any conclusions.

“We would have gone (to the hill) even if we had been told that we would be shot”, Vicka later told.

Once more great numbers of people had come to the hill: Now about 5,000. There was lots of pushing, everytbody trying to get as close to the seers as they could. Two times a spectator unknowingly stepped on the Virgin Mary’s long veil, and on both occasions this made her disappear. The people formed a circle around the visionaries, and when the Virgin came back for a third time, there was sufficient order for the apparition to be lasting longer.

This day, too, the Virgin answered several questions: “Let them believe strongly and guard the faith” in reply to what she wanted from the priests. “Let those who do not see believe as if they see” was her advice to the people at large.
Mirjana was greatly concerned by allegations of sceptics who thought the visionaries were epileptics or had been taking drugs. “My angels, do not be afraid of injustices. They have always existed” was the Virgin’s reply.


Fr. Jozo Zovko in the later 1980s. To begin with Medjugorje's parish priest did not believe the visionaries. Later he went on to become one of the greatest apostles of the Virgin's apparitions, bringing the message of Medjugorje to all four corners of the world


That same day Medjugorje’s parish priest returned to the village. For all the days of the apparitions so far he had been conducting a retreat for nuns in Zagreb. Fr. Jozo Zovko, a 40 years old Franciscan with a deep prayer life and a habit of long homilies, was startled to find the church surrounded by cars, trucks, tractors, donkey carts, and a huge crowd. Inside the retory he found a tape recorder in the meeting room, turned it on and listened to interviews with Ivan and Vicka, conducted that same morning by his assistant, Fr. Zrinko Cuvalo.

Fr. Jozo did not like the perspective at all: In Communist, atheist Yugoslavia religious gatherings outside the churches were illegal, and he also feared the apparitions had been set up by the Communists in an attempt to discredit and ridicule the Church. His assistant explained to him that the visionaries would return to the rectory that same afternoon so Fr. Jozo could question each of them.

In talking to the visionaries, Fr. Jozo disliked the ordinary language they made use of to describe their experiences. When he got to 10 years old Jakov, his attitude had turned to irritation: “You did not see her!” he sternly told the boy. “I saw the Madonna! I saw her as if she were in front of me. I saw her like I see you”, Jakov maintained.

Soon Fr. Jozo did not know what to think. On the one hand he found the Virgin Mary unlikely to choose six such ordinary youngsters (and not to any of the eight particularly pious village girls he had brought together as a prayer group). And there were slight differences when the visionaries were to explain what the Virgin had told them.
But on the other hand he was intrigued by the consistency in the physical descriptions of the Virgin offered by the seers: About 20 years old, indescribably beautiful, with blue eyes, black hair and a crown of 12 stars above her head, wearing a white veil and a blueish grey robe, hovering just above the ground and speaking in a singing voice.
Sources:
Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje”, third English edition, Informativni Centar “Mir” Medjugorje 2010

Randall Sullivan: “The Miracle Detective”, Grove Press 2004



June 28th 1981


The word kept spreading, and by the fifth day an estimated 15,000 people gathered on the hill. If men from the village had not made a path for the visionaries, they would have been unable to make their way through the crowd.

Among the many spectators was a local man named Grgo Kozina. He brought a tape recorder with him to be able to record any message the visionaries might obtain from the Virgin. They got quite a number but all the answers were essentially the same: The Virgin Mary wanted the locals to have faith, firm faith – to believe as if they had seen.



One of the earliest known photos of the visionaries, taken on the Hill of Apparitions on June 29th 1981. Left to right: Ivan, Marija, Mirjana, Ivanka, Vicka and Jakov. Far right: Grgo Kozina with his tape recorder, also in use the day before


Having just returned from the blissful state of the apparition, the visionaries next found themselves catapulted into a way less pleasant atmosphere: In the parish rectory they were aggressively questioned by the assistant pastor, Fr. Zrinko Cuvalo.

Fr. Zrinko chose to be purposefully antagonistic by asking the visionaries apparantly hostile questions. By subjecting them to a maximum of pressure, Fr. Zrinko wanted to test their reaction; at times he even claimed to visionaries to have been acting contrary to what he himself had seen with his own eyes during the apparition shortly before.
The visionaries stood by their word, by now more or less used to the hard questioning from the priests. Another such hour-long session had taken place early in the morning when Fr. Jozo, the parish priest, had questioned all six of them separately. During this interview session, particularly Vicka had made an impression upon him by answering back to questions she found silly, meaningless.
“Was the Virgin vexed when, yesterday, people stood on her veil?”, Fr. Jozo wanted to know. “Look, Our Lady cannot be ‘vexed’. She is not like us. She had no problem”, Vicka replied. “Why does the Virgin wear such a long veil?”, another priest asked. “How should I know?” said Vicka in reply. “Then what caused the Madonna to disappear?”, Fr. Jozo asked her next – only to be met with the answer: “Ask her!”.
As things turned out, a few more days would pass by until Fr. Jozo got that opportunity presented to him.
Sources:

Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje”, third English edition, Informativni Centar “Mir” Medjugorje 2010
Fr. Janko Bubalo: “A Thousand Encounters with The Virgin Mary in Medjugorje”, Friends of Medjugorje Chicago 1987
Randall Sullivan: “The Miracle Detective”, Grove Press 2004


June 29th 1981



On the sixth day of the apparitions, the police sent the visionaries to yet another doctor, this time a psychiatrist. Before the morning Mass, they were forced into an ambulance and taken away. And now they were not only being sent to nearby Citluk, but to Mostar, the capital of the Yugoslavian province of Hercegovina. Here they passed all tests and examinations they were subjected to by Dr. Mulija Dzuzda who declared them all healthy and perfectly normal.



Medjugorje in the Summer of 1981. An oasis of peace was in the making, but first the ruling Communists turned the village into a nightmare of surveillance and harassment


“It is the people who brought you here who must be insane. There is nothing wrong with you”, Dr. Dzuzda boldly told the visionaries.

To frighten the six, they first had to wait for an hour in the hallway. On one side, the insane were walking around in a courtyard; on the other was the hospital’s morgue where the seers saw corpses in various stages of autopsy. All six  except Vicka later admitted to having felt fear. “Why should I be afraid? Everyone dies. It is the common lot”, was Vicka’s reply.

Threats that the visionaries, too, could end up among those declared mentally ill were particularly frightening to Mirjana who, living in Sarajevo, had heard of many cases where opponents of Communist party officials had been locked up in psychiatric wards, never to be heard from again.

“If they question me once more, I will have a nervous breakdown”, said Mirjana. At one point she even doubted she would go back to the Hill of Apparitions. As the time of the apparition approached, she found that no one or nothing could prevent her from returning to the hill. The question of whether or not she should go simply did not arise.
In the late afternoon the visionaries were allowed to go back to Medjugorje where all six except Ivan went straight to the Hill of Apparitions. When Ivan returned, he found his family home guarded by police and armed officers from the state security police who had been assigned to the homes of all the visionaries. Instructed to follow the movements of the seers, the guards barred doors, peered in windows, and  were even stationed on rooftops.

Surrounded to all sides by this hostility, Ivan’s parents forbade him to go to the hill. However, the decision to obey his parents made Ivan sick  to his stomach, and when the time of the apparition approached he tried to make it to the apparition, all through waves of nausea. Having walked half the way, he made a silent vow to himself never to be absent again, and at that moment the Virgin appeared to him by the roadside, consoloing him and asking him to have courage.

Vicka’s mother, too, began to sway as the pressure increased. During one of the earliest days she was waiting outside Fr. Jozo’s room while the parish priest questioned the seers. To another priest, Fr. Tomislav Pervan, she cried out: “Father, please try to get this crazy thing out of their minds. I cannot take it anymore! I have seven other children at home…and Grandma…and my husband is in Germany. And now all these police around the house and all that is happening and all this commotion around the house…and people gathering here. I cannot stand it. I cannot carry it anymore!”
Upon hearing this, Vicka talked to her mother, overheard by several priests: “But Mama, what can I say? I am seeing the Blessed Virgin”.

On the hill more than 15,000 people gathered that day. “Will we be able to endure all this?” was one understandable question put forth to the Virgin. “You will be able to endure, my angels. Do not fear. You will be able to endure everything. You must believe and have confidence in me”, was the Virgin Mary’s reply, according to the visionaries.



Darinka Glamuzina, doctor, declared atheist, and among the first medical specialists to take a look at the visionaries. In the years to come, a countless number of her colleagues would go on to conclude that the seers are healthy and perfectly normal - and to exclude all the known alternative explanations of the behavior of the visionaries during apparitions


On Apparition Hill another doctor showed up: Dr. Darinka Glamuzina, from Citluk and a declared atheist. Upon asking the visionaries she was allowed to touch the Virgin who, according to the visionaries, answered the request saying “There have always been Judases who don’t believe, but she can approach”.

Vicka showed the doctor where to place her hand. Upon touching the apparition, the doctor immediately pulled back her arm and withdrew. On her face was an expression that thrilled some, and frightened others. People close to her said it seemed like she experienced an electrical shock – the doctor herself later testified  that she had felt “a shudder”. People who saw her descend the hill said she looked severely shocked. At the foot of the hill, she told the waiting police that she wanted nothing more to do with their investigation.

June 29th also saw the first miraculous cure among the more than 500 for which documentation is today being kept in Medjugorje’s parish archive: Daniel Setka, a 3 years old boy who had been unable to speak as well as walk by himself throughout his young life, uttered his first word when his parents returned with him upon having had him presented to the Virgin during the apparition. The next day the family returned to the hill where Daniel was suddenly able to walk by himself. “Look, Mummy, I am walking!”, the little boy exclaimed. Many people witnessed this touching scene.

At the end of the day, the visionaries were together on the terrace belonging to Marinko and Dragica Ivankovic, a local couple who believed them from the beginning. Here they passed on everything the Virgin Mary had told them so far – to a large, enthusiastic crowd that refused to let them return to their homes until after 11 o’clock in the evening. During the first week the visionaries only had very little sleep. But things should turn even more exhausting for them.
Sources:
Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje”, third English edition, Informativni Centar “Mir” Medjugorje 2010
Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “In the Company of Mary”, St. Francis Press 1988
Fr. Janko Bubalo: “A Thousand Encounters with The Virgin Mary in Medjugorje”, Friends of Medjugorje Chicago 1987
Fr. RenĂ© Laurentin: “Learning From Medjugorje”, The Word Among Us Press 1988
Randall Sullivan: “The Miracle Detective”, Grove Press 2004
Mary Craig: “Spark From Heaven”, Ave Maria Press 1988

June 30th 1981


For the visionaries a very long and tough seventh day of the apparitions got started right after morning Mass when the parish priest, Fr. Jozo Zovko, subjected them to yet another session of hard interviewing. For example, directly accusing the visionaries’ grown-up friend Marinko Ivankovic for having written the alleged answers of the Virgin Mary as well as the questions put forth to her, Fr. Jozo asked Ivanka if it was not better if he, a priest, wrote the answers.



Ivanka in the early days


“He did not write the answers, only the questions”, Ivanka insisted. Fr. Jozo had equally little success when next he summoned Mirjana to be questioned. “I am not afraid of the state security police. But I am petrified that they might put me in the hospital”, she said, still having her experience from the day before very much on her mind.

“God terribly punishes anyone who misleads people. It may be tomorrow He terribly punishes you six”, Fr. Jozo next told Mirjana. “I don’t think He will”, Mirjana replied. “Why won’t He?”, Fr. Jozo asked next. “Because we are not lying”, said Mirjana.

Pressure came from both sides, clerical and secular alike: Still more determined to put the apparitions to an end, the Communist authorities deployed yet another means on June 30th. Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, two social workers invited the visionaries to join them for what would be a car trip of just about four hours. All six except Ivan agreed and went along. As for Fr. Jozo, around the same moment he and his assistant, Fr. Zrinko Cuvalo, were summoned to the local Communist Party headquarters in Citluk to offer “an explanation” as to what was going on in their parish. That same afternoon they were threatened that “dire consequences” were to fall upon them in case they did not manage to immediately “extinguish this charade”.



The Hill of Apparitions seen from Cerno where the visionaries had their apparition on June 30th 1981 - and saw the hill and all the people gathered there engulfed in a bright, shining light. The apparition at Cerno would be the first among a countless number to show that the Virgin Mary appears to the visionaries, no matter where they are.


Driving by local towns and villages and going to see the waterfalls at Kravica, too, the visionaries had also been treated with a restaurant dinner when eventually they realized that the purpose of their road trip was one of keeping them away from the Hill of Apparitions. Around six o’clock they were passing through the village called Cerno when the visionaries, sensing that the Virgin Mary was about to appear, demanded the social workers to stop and let them out. Pretending not to hear them, the social workers kept driving, only to hear the visionaries say they would otherwise jump out of the car. Only then did the social workers stop.

The visionaries went a bit off the road. From their position high above the valley, they could see the Hill of Apparitions though they were several miles away from the hill. As they looked towards the hill, the visionaries saw it was bathed in a bright, shining light that completely engulfed it  along with all the now 20,000 people who had gathered. The two social workers also saw the light on the hill. It moved towards the visionaries who then started singing and praying. Next they fell to their knees, and the apparition began.
During the apparition the visionaries asked the Virgin Mary if she was angry with them, now when they were not on the hill. “That does not matter”, the Virgin replied, according to the visionaries. Only the time of the apparition would always be the same, the Virgin told them next.

Having been informed of this, the visionaries asked the two social workers to drive them back to Medjugorje. Not to the hill where the visionaries realized that all the thousands of people had been waiting in vain, but to the parish office. Among the people, all kinds of rumors went around: That the visionaries had fled or had been taken to prison. As people were gossiping, Fr. Jozo, the parish priest, questioned the seers until just about 9 o’clock in the evening.



Marinko Ivankovic, in the earliest days the one local man who did most to protect the visionaries. An unknown mechanic in 1981, the apparitions in his village later earned him invitations to give his testimony at several Marian conferences in the United States


Even then, for the visionaries the day was yet to come to an end. When they heard that their friend Marinko Ivankovic had been arrested, accused of having initiated the apparitions, at 10 o’clock they went to the police station in the municipality capital of Citluk to inform the police that Marinko had not initiated anything and indeed was guilty of nothing: Marinko was equally innocent of having encouraged religious gatherings in a public space, another accusation leveled against him, the visionaries insisted during their encounter with the head of the local police.

“Arrest us if you want, but leave Marinko alone”, Vicka told the chief of police. Threats and accusations were leveled against them, and also against Zlata, Vicka’s mother who was with them: “What an education you are giving your children! This country of Tito which we have freed with much blood, you are going to destroy it!” was just one among a large number. “You keep your Tito. We have Our Lady!”, Vicka boldly answered back.

Only at 2 o’clock in the middle of the night were the visionaries able to go home – along with Marinko.
Sources:
Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje”, third English edition, Informativni Centar “Mir” Medjugorje 2010
Fr. Janko Bubalo: “A Thousand Encounters with The Virgin Mary in Medjugorje”, Friends of Medjugorje, Chicago 1987
Mary Craig: “Spark From Heaven”, Ave Maria Press 1988
Randall Sullivan: “The Miracle Detective”, Grove Press 2004

July 1st 1981


From the early hours of the eighth day, the visionaries were being chased by large police forces. Throughout the village people were being asked where they were but the answers were of  little help to the police: In the fields, in the village, here, there, everywhere.



It may not look too frightening, but there were many of them: A good week into the apparitions, tracking down the visionaries was the top priority of the local police

In a sense they were right because the visionaries, fully aware that they were being looked for, stayed out of sight and even changed their clothes in order to change their appearance. However, in the early afternoon all these precautions did not prevent Ivanka, Marija and Vicka from being tracked down by two policemen who offered to take them along for a ride: This way, the officers explained, both sides would get what they wanted: The visionaries would escape the throng of people who kept asking them all kinds of questions – and the police would keep the seers away from the Hill of Apparitions.

Ivanka, Marija and Vicka accepted the offer, but soon had to acknowledge they had fallen into a trap. When the police car drove by the church toward Ciluk, they started banging the doors as they shouted for help. This was when the Virgin Mary appeared to them briefly to offer her encouragement. The police officers noticed the expressions on the girls’ faces and stopped the car, shouting they were witches. The three visionaries flung the doors open and ran through the vineyards, heading for the church.The two policemen continued chasing them on foot.


St. James' Church in Medjugorje in the Summer of 1981. The stream of people heading towards the church is merely a symbol of the throng that gathered for the evening Mass on July 1st - and of the more than 30 million pilgrims who were later to arrive


Inside the church Fr. Jozo, the parish priest, found himself in great anguish. Now both of his assistants had started to believe that the visions of the children might be real. Feeling great responsibility towards the people as well as towards his fellow priests, yet less and less knowing what to make of the whole situation, alone in the church he knelt down and prayed: “God, I know You talked to Abraham, to Moses and to others. Now there are thousands of people here these days. Tell me where the river is going. I do not know where the mouth of that river is, nor what its source is”.

To Fr. Jozo, what happened next was both a turning point and a moment of profound revelation. While he was praying, he heard a voice say: “Come out and protect the children!”. He left his Bible and breviary behind, genuflected and with no further thought or delay left the church. As he left St. James’ Church through the middle door, with his foot still in the air and the door handle still in his hand, the visionaries ran toward him from the left side.

“The police are after us! Hide us!”, the visionaries told him. They gathered around him, and Fr. Jozo embraced them. Next he took them to the rectory and locked them in an unoccupied room. In the very last minute, it showed, for the next to be rounded up by the police was Fr. Jozo himself.
“Did you see the children?”, he was asked. “I did”, Fr. Jozo answered as he pointed towards the visionaries’ part of the village. When the policemen ran there, Fr. Jozo returned to the seers. Soon after the Virgin Mary appeared to them and consoled them.



Fr. Jozo with five of the visionaries in the Summer of 1981. Left to right around the priest: Ivanka, Jakov, Vicka, Mirjana, and Marija


At 4 o’clock in the afternoon all the visionaries were together in the church. The word started spreading that the seers would be there, not on the Hill of Apparitions. Around 5 o’clock Fr. Zrinko started leading the people in the prayers of the Rosary, and one hour later Fr. Jozo found the church packed with people to the point when he could not stretch out his arms in saying “The Lord be with you” when the Mass began. During his homily the Virgin Mary appeared to the visionaries in a small room in the rectory.
In his homily Fr. Jozo asked the congregation to pray and to fast, begging God to help them all to understand the events. The throng of people responded, full of faith: “We will!”.

That evening the spectators became participators – and the centre of events also shifted from the Hill of Apparitions to the church. In this way, the eighth day of the apparitions became a prelude to how things have been in Medjugorje ever since.

Endnotes:
Though the interrogations went on, and though the visionaries and their families were threatened with the loss of their land and their houses, none of them were ever sent to prison. However, every day for about half a year Mirjana was taken to the police station in Sarajevo for intensive questioning, and there were many other harassments as well. Instead Fr. Jozo was sentenced to three years of prison out of which he served a year and a half subjected to hard physical work and occasional torture. Fr. Jozo had lost the last traces of his disbelief in the apparitions when he also saw the Virgin Mary during an evening Mass, as witnessed by a great many people. Also 20 years old Ivan Ivankovic who only saw the outline of the Virgin and only on the first day had to spend a while in prison for refusing to deny the apparitions.
Sources:
Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic: “The Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje”, third English edition, Informativni Centar “Mir” Medjugorje” 2010
Fr. RenĂ© Laurentin: “Learning From Medjugorje”, The Word Among Us Press 1988
Randall Sullivan: “The Miracle Detective”, Grove Press 2004


alt
Podbrdo or Apparition Hill


THE APPARITIONS CONTINUE

Soon after this the police began to hinder the children and the pilgrims going on Podbrdo, the site of apparitions. The children, and soon afterwards even the crowds were forbidden to go there. But Our Lady continued to appear to them in secret places, in their homes and in the fields. The children had already gained confidence, and openly spoke with Our Lady, eagerly seeking her advice, listening to her warnings and messages. The events of Medjugorje continued in this fashion up until the 15th of January 1982.


In the meantime, the Parish Priest began to host the pilgrims in the Church, enabling them to participate in the rosary and to celebrate the Eucharist. The children also gave out the rosary. Our Lady sometimes appeared to them in the church at that time. Even the Parish Priest himself once while praying the rosary, saw Our Lady. Immediately he broke off praying and spontaneously started to sing a popular hymn: "Lijepa si, lijepa, Djevo Marijo" - "O how beautiful you are, Most Blessed Virgin Mary". The whole church could see that something unusual was happening to him. Afterwards he stated that he had seen her. And so, he who up until then had not only been doubtful, but openly against even rumours of the apparitions, became their defender. He testified his support of the apparitions even to the point of serving a prison sentence.


From the 15th of January 1982 onwards the children saw Our Lady in a closed off area of the Parish Church. The Parish Priest arranged this because of the newly arisen difficulties and sometimes even dangers, which provided themselves for the visionaries. Previously the children had ensured that this was in accord with Our Lady's wishes. Because of the prohibitions of the Diocesan Bishop however, from April 1985 onwards the children ceased to use the area of the church as an apparition site. Instead, they went to a room in the Parish house.


All this time, from the beginning of the apparitions up until today, there have only been five days when none of the children saw Our Lady. Our Lady didn't always appear in the same place either, nor to the same group, nor individuals, nor did her apparitions always last a specified period. Sometimes the apparitions lasted two minutes, sometimes an hour. Neither did Our Lady appear at the children's will. Sometimes they prayed and waited but Our Lady didn't appear until a little while afterwards, unexpectedly and unforewarned. And sometimes she appeared to one and not to the others. If she hadn't promised an appointed time, nobody knew when she would appear, or if she would appear. Neither did she appear always to just the aforesaid visionaries, but to others also of different age, stature, race, education and walks of life. All this suggests that the apparitions are not a product of the imagination. It depends neither on time nor place, nor desire nor the prayer of pilgrim or visionary, but moreover on the will of Him who permits it.

A few months into the apparitions the Virgin Mary began to entrust to the visionaries informations they were not allowed to share with other people. These informations are prophecies – future events foretold by the Virgin. Within the Medjugorje movement they are referred to as ‘the secrets’, a term that the visionaries were themselves the first to coin.

According to the visionaries, the events will take place during their lifetimes. The six visionaries were born between 1964 and 1971. At least in the case of Mirjana the events will be foretold to the world before they take place. Three days before, to be exact.
Each of the visionaries will receive 10 such secrets, they have said from the beginning. Some of them have to do with beautiful events while at least the last four ones are more or less disasterous.


The visionaries in the first year of the apparitions. In the middle Ivanka and Mirjana who appear to have the most exact and detailed knowledge of the future of the world


Some of the secrets are global in nature, others local, and yet others have to do with the seers themselves. According to Mirjana (who says she knows the timing of each secret down to the hour and minute), “the dates of the secrets have not altered and cannot be”.

(1)While Mirjana will have a key role when the secrets are to be revealed, it appears that Ivanka, too, knows a lot:
”It is well-known that Vicka has written notebooks about the Virgin Mary’s life, but what isn’t well-known is that Ivanka has several notebooks of her own; about the world’s future”, the very knowledgable French nun Sr. Emmanuel Maillard has written.

(2)The visionaries: Do not fear, but prepare
In spite of their knowledge and despite that the later secrets made all the visionaries sad, they have repeatedly said that no one should fear the 10 secrets. Instead they have repeatedly urged everyone to prepare – by making good use of this time which the Virgin Mary has called “a time of grace”: A time to convert and return to God thorugh prayer, fasting, confession, going to church and reading the Bible.


Mirjana - chosen for a key role when the secrets are to be revealed

“People always ask me curious questions about the secrets. But I tell them that the Virgin Mary has said that we should not talk about the secrets, but that we should pray. Anyone who accepts the Virgin Mary as his Mother and God as his Father does not have to worry about anything”, Mirjana said in 2001 and, indeed, on many other occasions.

(3)“There is no need to frighten people. The Virgin Mary does not come to frighten anyone. That is not her goal. She comes to help us”, Ivan said in 1992 and, again, on many other occasions.

(4)“With prayer and penance the chastisement can be lessened. I can only say: Prepare. If you do, you will thank God for all eternity”, Vicka has said.

(5) Secrets are about the world, each person, the Church, Medjugorje, and the seers
During their adult lives the visionaries have said less and less about the secrets. Their approach was slightly more informative in the early years of the apparitions. And so, in an interview conducted in early December 1982, four of the visionaries gave somewhat revealing answers to the Franciscan priest Fr. Ljudevit Rupcic. It is worthy of mention that, by the time of this interview, none of the seers had received the tenth secret. Mirjana knew 9, Vicka and Ivanka 7 and Marija only 6 of the secrets:
Marija: “[My secrets] have to do with us, the Church, people in general.”
Mirjana: “They have to do with us ourselves, the sign, the whole world, and also Medjugorje.”
Ivanka: “Some concern us personally, others, the Church and the world.”
Vicka: “The first secret has to do with our church in Medjugorje. It has to do as well with the sign, humanity in general, and each person. The secrets speak of the Church in general. There are some which concern us.”

(6) Generally the seers know the same secrets
Another topic to raise some speculation has been if the visionaries know the same secrets. Otherwise the total number of future events covered by the secrets could be thought to (even far) outnumber the ten to be entrusted to each visionary. On this note Vicka gave the answer in a 1983 interview with the local Franciscan priest Fr. Janko Bubalo:


Visionary Vicka Ivankovic and the local Franciscan priest Fr. Janko Bubalo during one of their interview sessions in 1983-84. "Everything I have to say about the secrets I told to Fr. Janko Bubalo", Vicka said on a later occasion


Fr. Janko: “Are those secrets the same for each of you?”
Vicka: “They are and they aren’t.”
Fr. Janko: “And how is that?”
Vicka: “Just so. The main secrets are the same, but perhaps some of us have a secret which applies to us alone.”
Fr. Janko: “Do you have such a secret?
Vicka: “I have one. It is for me alone, since it concerns me only.”
Fr. Janko: “Do the others have any such secrets?”
Vicka: “That I don’t know. It seems to me that Ivan does.”
Fr. Janko: “I know that Mirjana, Ivanka, and Marija don’t have any since they told me. I don’t, however, know for little Jakov. He didn’t want to answer me on that point, while Ivan said that he had three which concern him only.” (7)
”None of my secrets are secrets that relate only to me. The secrets are for the entire world”, Mirjana confirmed on September 13th 1998, during a Q and A session at the Chicago Marian Conference.


 (8) The secrets determine the duration of each seer’s daily apparitions
At least so far the reception of the tenth and final secret has meant the end of daily apparitions for the visionaries who received the tenth secret. This happened first to Mirjana (in 1982), then to Ivanka (in 1985), and then to Jakov (in 1998). According to their testimonies, Vicka, Marija and Ivan have received nine secrets each and so still have daily apparitions.
For many years it was commonly believed that none of the visionaries would still have daily apparitions by the time when the secrets begin to unfold. As such, it was one of the biggest pieces of substantial news on Medjugorje for years when, in January 2008, Vicka told Radio Maria that one visionary will still have daily apparitions, even throughout the entire revelation:
Interviewer: “You also said the last time [we spoke], last year, that during the time of the ten secrets one of the seers will still have the daily apparitions?”.
Vicka: “Yes, it is certain, it is something I repeat now. We will see who it is, there is still me, Marija and Ivan. Afterwards we will see who the Madonna has chosen, who [of us three] remains with the apparitions. Or maybe it will be someone else that the Madonna has chosen.”
Vicka: “The Madonna told me personally. Afterwards we shall see, the Madonna didn’t say, “Vicka, it will be you” [...]. Now we just wait to see who it will be. She said that when the time comes, to the person who will continue to have the apparitions, she will explain every ‘how and what’ to that person. ”

(9)Mirjana’s key role in the revelation

Fr. Petar Ljubicic, the Franciscan priest chosen by Mirjana to reveal her secrets to the world

One visionary to whom the Virgin Mary has already “explained every how and what” is Mirjana. The first visionary to receive the tenth secret, Mirjana was also entrusted the mission of revealing her secrets to the world when the time comes. This she will do through the Franciscan priest Fr. Petar Ljubicic whom she chose for this purpose in 1985.

Since then Mirjana has explained the procedure on countless occasions: Ten days before each event she will alert Fr. Petar that an event covered by the secrets is about to occur. Then the two of them will pray and fast for seven days. Three days before each occurence, Mirjana has said, Fr. Petar will make public what will happen three days later.

According to Mirjana, the priest will do this after having been (supernaturally) enabled to read the secret on a parchment that Mirjana says has been given to her by the Virgin Mary. She has said that this parchment lists the contents of all her ten secrets, but that Fr. Petar will only be enabled to read them one at a time. Mirjana has said that she knows the timing of each of her secrets down to the hour and minute.
”You don’t have to worry about anything. You will know everything”, Mirjana has answered the question of how the world will be made aware that one of the secrets is about to unfold.

(8) When Fr. Petar and Mirjana release the first secret, they will announce an event that, according to Mirjana, “will make people pause and think”.
Sources:
(1) Michael H. Brown: “When Will the Permanent Sign Foreseen at Medjugorje Occur?”, Spirit Daily 2001
(2) Sr. Emmanuel Maillard: “Medjugorje, the 90s”, Queenship Publications 1997
(3) Medjugorje Gebetsaktion no. 61, June 2001
(4) Medjugorje Gebetsaktion no. 28, January 1993
(5) Janice Connell: “Queen of the Cosmos”, Paraclete Press 1990
(6) Fr. Ljudevit Rupcic and Fr. RenĂ© Laurentin: “Is the Virgin Mary Appearing at Medjugorje?”, The Word Among Us Press 1984
(7) Fr. Janko Bubalo: “A Thousand Encounters with the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje”, Friends of Medjugorje Chicago 1987
(8) Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo: Q and A session in Chicago on September 13th 1998, quoted here from medjugorje.org
(9) Vicka Ivankovic-Mijatovic interviewed by Radio Maria on January 2nd 2008



The visionaries have given a description of Our Lady:

1. How tall is the Madonna ? About 165 cm - Like me. (Vicka) [5 feet 5 inches]

2. Does she look rather "slender", slim or . . .?She looks rather slender.

3. About how many kilograms do you think she weighs?About 60 kilograms (132 pounds).

4. How old does Our Lady appera? From 18 to 20 years old.

5. When she is with the Child Jesus does she look older?She looks as usual - she looks the same.

6. When Our Lady is with you is she always standing or . . . Always standing.

7. On what is she standing?On some little cloud.

8. What colour is that little cloud?The cloud is a whitish color.

9. Have you ever seen her kneel?Never! (Vicka, Ivan, Ivanka. . .)

10. Naturally your Madonna also has her own face. How does it look: round or rather long - oval?It's rather long - oval - normal.

11. What colour is her face?Normal - rather light - rosy cheeks.

12. What colour is her brow?Normal - mainly light like her face.

13. What kind of lips does Our Lady have - rather thick or thin?Normal - beautiful - they are more thin.

14. What colour are they?Reddish - natural colour.

15. Does Our Lady have any dimples, as we people usually have?Ordinarily she doesn't - perhaps a little, if she smiles. (Mirjana)

16. Is there some pleasant smile ordinarily noticeable on her countenance?Maybe - more like some indescribable gentleness - there's a smile visible as if somehow under her skin. (Vicka)

17. What is the colour of Our Lady's eyes?Her eyes are wonderful! Clearly blue. (all)

18. Are they rather big or . . .?More normal - maybe a little bit bigger. (Marija)

19. How are her eyelashes?Delicate - normal.

20. What colour are her eyelashes?Normal - no special colour.

21. Are they thinner or . . .?Ordinary - normal.

22. Of course, Our Lady also has a nose. What is it like: sharp or . . .?A nice, little nose (Mirjana) - normal, harmonizing with her face. (Marija)

23. And Our Lady's eyebrows?Her eyebrows are thin - normal - more of a black colour.

24. How is your Madonna dressed?She is clothed in a simple woman's dress.

25. What colour is her dress?Her dress is grey - maybe a little bluish-grey. (Mirjana)

26. Is the dress tight-fitting or does it fall freely?It falls freely.

27. How far down does her dress reach?All the way down to the little cloud on which she's standing - it blends into the cloud.

28. How far up around the neck?Normally - up to the beginning of her neck.

29. Is a part of Our Lady's neck visible?Her neck is visible, but nothing of her bosom is visible.

30. How far do her sleeves reach?Up to her palms.

31. Is Our Lady's dress hemmed with anything?No, not with anything.

32. Is there anything pulled in or tied around Our Lady's waist?No, there's nothing.

33. On the body of the Madonna that you see, is her femininity noticeable?Of course it's noticeable! But nothing specially. (Vicka)

34. Is there anything else on Our Lady besides this dress described?She has a veil on her head.

35. What colour is that veil?The veil is a white colour.

36. Pure white or . . .?Pure white.

37. How much of her does the veil cover?It covers her head, shoulders and complete body from the back and from the sides.

38. How far down does it reach?It reaches down to the little cloud, also like her dress.

39. How far does it cover in front?It covers from the back and from the sides.

40. Does the veil look firmer, thicker than Our Lady's dress?No it doesn't - it's similar to the dress.

41. Is there any kind of jewellery on her?There is no kind of jewellery.

42. Is the veil trimmed with anything at the ends?Not with anything.

43. Does Our Lady have any kind of ornament at all?She has no kind.

44. For example, on her head or around the head?Yes - she has a crown of stars on her head.

45. Are there always stars around her head?Ordinarily there are - there always are. (Vicka)

46. For example, when she appears with Jesus?She's the same way.

47. How many stars are there?There are twelve of them.

48. What colour are they?Golden - gold colour.

49. Are they in any way connected with each other?They are connected with something - so that can stay up. (Vicka)

50. Is a little bit of Our Lady's hair visible?A little bit of her hair is visible.

51. Where do you see it?A little above her forehead - from under the veil - from the left side.

52. What colour is it?Its black.

53. Is either of Our Lady's ears ever visible?No, they are never visible.

54. How is that?Well, the veil covers her ears.

55. What is Our Lady usually looking at during the apparition?Usually she is looking at us - sometimes at something else, at what she's showing.

56. How does Our Lady hold her hands?Her hands are free, relaxed, extended.

57. When does she hold her hands folded?Almost never - maybe sometimes at the "Glory be".

58. Does she ever move, gesture with her hands during the apparitions?She does not gesture, except when she shows something.

59. Which way are her palms turned when her hands are extended?Her palms are usually relaxed upwards - her fingers are relaxed in the same way.

60. Are her fingernails then also visible?They are partially visible.

61. How are they - which colour are they?Natural colour – clean-cut fingernails.

62. Have you ever seen Our Lady's legs?No - never - her dress always covers them.

63. Finally, is Our Lady really beautiful, as you have said? Well, really we haven't told you anything about that - her beauty cannot be described - it is not our kind of beauty - that is something ethereal - something heavenly - something that we'll only see in Paradise - and then only to a certain degree.                                                          

 © Information Centre "Mir" Medjugorje,