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CV NEWS FEED // The Holy See has announced that it will hold a press conference this week concerning the pilgrimage site and alleged apparitions of Medjugorje.
At the press conference, which will take place at the Holy See Press Office on Thursday, September 19, at 11:30 AM Rome time, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Msgr. Armando Matteo, Secretary of the Doctrinal Section of the same Dicastery, and Andrea Tornielli, Editorial Director of the Dicastery for Communication, will address the question of the authenticity of the apparitions and status of the pilgrimage site.
The press conference will be livestreamed on the Vatican News YouTube channel at Vatican News – YouTube.
Following a negative judgment of the local bishop on the question of whether the alleged apparitions were authentic or of supernatural origin, in 1991, the bishops of Yugoslavia published a joint negative judgment titled the “Zara Declaration.” Based on ecclesiastical investigations, they declared that it was not possible to affirm that the apparitions were supernatural phenomena.
Then, in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI established the International Commission of Inquiry within the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to investigate the matter in the name of the Holy See regarding whether the alleged apparitions had a “supernatural nature or not.”
The Vatican’s extensive investigation concluded in 2014 and included a review of all documentation available as well as interviews with the alleged “visionaries.”
In 2017, during an in-flight press conference after visiting Fatima on May 13, after reminding journalists that private apparitions and revelations were “not part of the Church’s public ordinary Magisterium” Pope Francis distinguished three aspects to Medjugorje.
“Regarding the first apparitions, when [the ‘visionaries’] were children, the report more or less says that further investigation is needed. About the presumed current apparitions, the report has its doubts,” he noted. “Thirdly, the core of the Ruini report: the spiritual fact, the pastoral fact, people who go there and convert, people who encounter God, who change their lives. For this, there is no magic wand, and this spiritual-pastoral fact cannot be denied,” he said.
In 2019, Archbishop Henryk Hoser and the Apostolic Nuncio to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Archbishop Luigi Pezzuto, announced that Pope Francis had authorized dioceses and parishes to organize official pilgrimages to Medjugorje. The then-CDF had previously only allowed private pilgrimages due to the questions on the authenticity of the apparitions and the negative judgment of the bishops of Yugoslavia.
However, the Vatican also cautioned at the time that dioceses and parishes should “avoid that these pilgrimages are interpreted as an authentication of the known events, which still require examination by the Church. Therefore, it is to be avoided that such pilgrimages create confusion or ambiguity from a doctrinal point of view. This also applies to pastors of any rank who intend to go to Medjugorje and celebrate or concelebrate there in a solemn manner.”
