Medjugorje Revisited: 30 Years of Visions or Religious Fraud?

By Foley, Donal Anthony

An American theologian whose name you would recognize told me years ago to avoid commenting on Medjugorje, calling it “a giant tar baby,” i.e., everyone who touches it gets covered in sticky tar. There is wisdom to the advice as adherents tend overwhelmingly to be impervious to contrary evidence, hell bent on convincing you that the Gospa (Croatian for “our Lady”) is appearing there, and insistent that you accept this. They meet Churchill’s definition of a fanatic: one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Of the many hundreds of unapproved apparitions, Medjugorje is king. The global movement thrown up around it dominates the Internet searches, fills the wallets of pilgrimage companies, boosts DVD and book sales, sponsors (mostly banned) Medjugorje conferences, and enlists prayer groups to disseminate the messages. The Movement is comfortable repeating whoppers such as, “the local bishop was recalcitrant so the pope took the matter out of the bishop’s hands,” “doctors tested the seers and they’re legit,” and “Pope John Paul II called Medjugorje the ‘spiritual nerve center of the world.’”

Despite obvious problems, it spread around the world thanks to a perfect storm of ignorance of the official decrees given by the Church, media outlets attached to the Charismatic Renewal, and the massive catechetical crisis in the universal Church. In a Church roiled by scandal and overseen by modernist bishops, Medjugorje holds out a sense of terra firma, an anchor to heaven in a crazy world.

In this, the Movement has some elements in common with the Society of St. Pius X. First, baptized dissent and recalicitrance. SSPX adepts have an answer to every Catholic objection. If you point out that the June 30, 1988 ordinations by Archbishop Lefebvre were schismatic and led to his excommunication and those of the four bishops, you will be told solemnly that Lefebvre (a future saint, mind you) was “acting under emergency conditions” and that the excommunications by Pope St. John Paul II weren’t real excommunications to begin with. If you show them the March 10, 2009 Letter by Pope Benedict XVI that lifted said excommunications, the reply comes, “that was a translation problem from the Latin.”

Second, the confusion compounded by the topsy-turvy pronouncements of Pope Francis regarding the official status of SSPX and of the Medjugorje apparitions. With the former, the Argentine Pope allowed penitents to obtain valid absolution from Society priests after the 2015 Year of Mercy provision expired. (Recall that, prior to this, Pope Benedict XVI pronounced that, even with the lifting of the excommunications, “the Society does not exercise legitimate ministry in the Catholic Church.”) With the latter, in December 2017 the Pope permitted dioceses to organize Medjugorje pilgrimages, giving the impression of de facto papal approval, when none exists.

There is a third parallel: gnosticism. While SSPX and Medjugorje adepts come from very different perspectives—they are ecclesial opposites—they share a belief that some special knowledge validates their respective enthusiasms. (Relevant Radio host Drew Mariani says Medjugorje is “self-authenticating.”) Both groups reject the clear directives of the magisterium, and both arose as post-Vatican II oases in an otherwise arid and adrift Church.

Like the traditionalists who threw in their lot with Lefebvre, the Medjugorjians similarly rallied around the visions, with their apocalyptic Warnings and Secrets, which seemed to reconnect them with an emotional experience the Church no longer delivered. If parish life felt dead, Medjugorje felt alive with spiritual entertainment and a seeming connection to heaven itself.

The story began on Wednesday, June 24, 1981, when a handful of young people went up Podbrdo Hill near the small hamlet of Medjugorje in then Yugoslavia, now Bosnia-Herzegovina. (The very first apparitions happened the day before, so there is a controversy even over the official start date of the phenomenon.) When they came down from Podbrdo, they told people they saw the Blessed Mother. A few more joined them the next day, and it happened again. And again. And again. Right up to the present.

In taped interviews during that first week between the seers and two Franciscan Fathers, Zrinko Čuvalo, OFM and Jozo Zovko, OFM, the young people initially misled them, saying they were looking for sheep. Caught in a lie, seer Mirjana dissembled and admitted they went up to smoke. So began the tenuous relationship between the seers’ claims and the truth.

Bold Disobedience

Fast forward to March 18, 2020, coinciding with the evaporation of crowds due to the Covid-19 lockdown, seer Mirjana Dragičević-Soldo announced that the Gospa would no longer be appearing to her on the second of each month. Interesting timing. Eager not to let a good crisis go to waste, leading Medjugorje promoter “Friend of Medjugorje” (real name Terry Colafrancesco) founder of the cultish Caritas Birmingham, quickly ramped up his fund-raising machine,[1] despite being condemned by his local bishop and denounced by most of the Medjugorje movement. This profiteering powerhouse has no affiliation with the local Diocese of Birmingham, and is not at all bothered by the fact that Masses are not permitted to be said there by order of the local Bishop. Mother Angelica discouraged people from visiting Caritas Birmingham, and EWTN today does the same.

Space forbids detailing which seers still receive regular visions, but, in addition to Dragičević-Soldo, they are: Jakov Čolo; Marija Pavlović; Ivan Dragičević; Ivanka Ivanković-Elez; and Vicka Ivanković-Mijatovic. There are a couple of local locutionist co-stars, but these six are the best known.

When it comes to private revelation claims, the Catholic Church applies the principle of subsidiarity by consigning her authority to the local Ordinary, who is able invariably to know the most about the situation on the ground. All authentic apparitions, like Our Lady of Guadalupe, Lourdes, or Fatima, are approved by the local bishop. All fake apparitions are likewise condemned by the local bishop, such as those in Bayside, NY, Necedeh, WI, and the Holy Love Shrine near Cleveland, OH.

Like Medjugorje, all three of these bogus apparitions operate illicit shrines to this day in defiance of Church teaching.[2]

When fanaticism takes hold, appeals to episcopal authority are weak and bound to fail. Adherents acquire a strange brain lock early on, making them impervious to things like what the Church teaches.

Medjugorje got a new Bishop in July, 2020, Bishop Petar Palić, who now leads the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno/Trebinje-Mrkan. His longtime predecessor, Ratko Peric, never wavered in his complete rejection of the seers’ claims. Bishop Pavao Žanić, Peric’s predecessor, was initially open to them, but he quickly changed his mind after hearing the taped interviews and meeting with the seers himself. From that time forward, Bishop Žanić, who died in 2000, was resolutely against the whole thing.[3] Both prelates faced years of constant resistance, disobedience, and have been the objects of derision for their conviction that the Blessed Virgin has never appeared in Medjugorje.

Beginning a year after the visions began, a series of commissions were set up to investigate them. The first diocesan commission was held in Mostar (1982-1984), was expanded (1984-1986), and then followed by a commission of the Bishops’ Conference in Zagreb (1987-1990), a commission of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (2009-2014), which produced an evaluation of the same Congregation (2014-2016), as designated by then Pope Benedict XVI and led by Camillo Cardinal Ruini of Rome.

The Ruini Commission

This final Ruini Commission report has been on Pope Francis’ desk for over four years. A rumor began to circulate in May of 2016 that this Commission was set to approve “the first seven messages.” On what basis would Pope Francis decide to approve the first seven, and then reject the subsequent tens of thousands? And since the content of the first week’s “messages” is almost nil (see problem #1 below), it’s hard to imagine what exactly the Church would be approving.

Another odd feature of the sprawling saga is the number of spin-off apparitions in the United States. People go to Medjugorje, “catch the spirit,” and begin having their own visions back home. All spin-off seers have ignored the condemnations by their respective local bishops. Here are five examples of Medjugorje copycats: Nancy Fowler of Conyers, GA; Theresa Lopez of Denver, CO, Steve Marino of Kettle River, MN; Gianna Talone-Sullivan, formerly of Phoenix, now Baltimore; and John Leary of Rochester, who said, after a 1993 trip to Medjugorje, that he started seeing Jesus, Mary, and dead people, and wrote his visions down in over 12 volumes, excessive verbosity being another sign of a bogus apparition. The Blessed Mother never wasted a word in Lourdes, Fatima, and said nothing at all at Knock, Ireland.

The official judgment of every commission and both bishops since 1981 regarding Medjugorje has been non constat de supernaturalitate, or, “it is not established that anything supernatural is happening.” While not a full-on condemnation, it is a negative judgment, from which the Church has never wavered.

Some Medjugorje enthusiasts are quick to say that it’s not really a negative judgment, but more like, “Wait for the final approval—in the meantime, go there and see the wonderful things Our Lady has been doing.” That logic doesn’t quite work, for the same reason that if a man asks a woman to marry him and she says, “I’ll get back to you,” that’s a no. It’s only a yes when and if she accepts.

In order for Pope Francis to contradict the original enduring judgment of non constat de supernaturalitate and approve this complicated maze of messages, signs, pseudo-miracles (like rosary beads changing hue and spinning watch dials), warnings, and secrets, he must overcome the following seven serious problems:

How can the “first seven” apparitions, as the rumor mill claims, be approved, when “the Gospa” did not give any messages beyond vague answers to the seers’ questions?[4]

Why did “the Gospa” tell them on June 30, 1981, that she would appear for “three more days” and yet continue to appear daily for almost 40 years to the present?

Is it imaginable that the Blessed Virgin Mary would make subtle threats against the local bishops, foment resistance to their directives, and side with rebellious Franciscans, some of whom (see below) have since left the Order and the priesthood?

Why have so many spiritual directors and mentors of Medjugorje seers and spin-off seers either been suspended for disobedience or worse? Start the list with:

Jozo Zovko, OFM, suspended and disciplined multiple times.

Ivica Vego, OFM and Ivan Prusina, OFM, both suspended and reduced to the lay state by the Vatican Congregation for Religious, and dismissed from the Franciscan Order.

Tomislav Vlasic, OFM, incurred automatic interdict and was laicized under Pope Benedict XVI for “the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspected mysticism, disobedience towards legitimately issued orders and charges contra sextum (sins against the Sixth Commandment.) He still promotes Medjugorje, still insists on writing as “Father Tomislav,” and now runs a New Age UFO cult called the Central Nucleus with a woman called Stefania Caterina, who claims, inter alia, that she has visited “other humanities” on various planets.[5]

In 1984, Vlasic wrote to Pope John Paul II, referring to himself as “the one whom through Divine Providence guides the seers of Medjugorje.” This is the man to whom the “Gospa” referred in a February 28, 1982 vision, “Thank Tomislav very much, for he is guiding you very well.”[6]

The Sixth Commandment

Father Jack Spaulding, spiritual director of a Medjugorje spin-off youth group at St. Maria Goretti church in Scottsdale, AZ, which included Gianna Talone-Sullivan (see above) was found guilty by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of sins against the Sixth Commandment with a minor, was laicized, and indicted in January 2020 on six felony counts of sexual assault with minor boys. He died a few weeks later in February 2020.

Father Ken Roberts, mega-Medjugorje promoter, former EWTN host, and author of Playboy to Priest, was permanently suspended in 1998 by his bishop over allegations of sexual impropriety with younger men and minors in the Dallas Diocese. He died in 2018.

If the visionaries see and hear only the Gospa during their ecstasies as they maintain, why did Vicka do what you or I would do—jerk her head to the side—when someone motioned with two fingers toward her eyes, as captured on video by Professor Louis Belanger?[7]

How to explain that the Gospa recommended to the seers a book by dubious mystic Maria Valtorta, Poem of the Man God, which was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, and described in L’Osservatore Romano as “a badly fictionalized life of Christ” (quoted by then Cardinal Ratzinger in a letter dated January 31, 1985).

Why did none of the six Medjugorje seers ever embrace the consecrated life—which the Church teaches is objectively superior to the married state? This is highly unusual, given the choice made by the seers of approved apparitions and locutions like St. Bernadette of Lourdes, St. Lucia Santos of Fatima, St. Juan Diego of Guadalupe, and St. Catherine Labouré of Rue de Bac.

Why did “the Gospa” tell the seers that her birthday is August 4 (the 2000th anniversary being August 4, 1984), when the Church has liturgically observed September 8 as Our Lady’s birthday since before the seventh century?

If Pope John Paul II was such a big supporter of Medjugorje: why did he visit Bosnia-Herzegovina twice as Pontiff, but skip nearby Medjugorje? Why did he never mention it in his pontificate, either in public remarks or private diaries—and why did he replace the deceased Bishop Žanić with the even more skeptical Bishop Peric?

How could the Blessed Virgin Mary possibly endorse a story as absurd and blasphemous as the tale of the bloody handkerchief?

Number 10 requires some spelling out. This anecdote began to circulate in and around the village in late summer in 1981. It’s a variation of a pious European old wives’ tale in which a certain cab driver came across a man who was covered in blood from head to toe. This man handed the cabbie a bloody handkerchief and ordered him to “throw this in the river.”

The cab driver drove on and then came across a woman dressed all in black. She hailed the cab and asked him to give her a handkerchief. He gave her his own hankie, but she said, “Not that one, the bloody one.” So the cabbie demurred and handed her the bloody one. The lady in black replied: “If you had thrown it into the river, the end of the world would have occurred now.”

Now, most reasonable people would find such an occultic tall-tale hard to believe. But seer Vicka doubled down, and her testimony about the red hanky/black lady/end of the world story is part of the public record. She wrote in her diary on September 4, 1981 that not only was the lady in black the Gospa, but the man dripping with blood was Jesus.[8]

The movement trumpets the good fruits of Medjugorje, like religious conversion and changed lives. But it must confront and admit the bad, which are in disturbing abundance.

If Pope Francis was interested in furthering the negative trajectory established by previous legitimate Catholic authority, he would drop the holy hammer on the phenomenon. He has, on the contrary, created an absurd no-man’s-land situation. He appointed Polish Archbishop Henrik Hoser on February 11, 2017, to serve as a Papal Envoy to “attend to the pastoral needs of the pilgrims” and to “suggest initiatives for their care.” Archbishop Hoser gave some interviews that left readers scratching their heads.

On August 19, 2017, the Polish prelate told the Catholic Information Agency (KIA) that, “it’s possible that the first seven Medjugorje apparitions will be recognized.” The Medjugorje’s amen corner of the Internet lit up with the usual headline splashes of exclamation marks. But the Pope ended Hoser’s appointment abruptly after two more weird interviews in December, one to Aleteia, in which he said, “the devotion of Medjugorje is allowed. It’s not prohibited, and need not be done in secret,” and, “what confirms the authenticity of the place is the large amount of charitable institutions that exist around the sanctuary.”

Authority of the Bishop

What does that mean? Is Medjugorje now approved, or not? And who has been forcing pilgrims to “believe in secret”? Does the existence of charitable institutions amidst the ever-expanding hamlet of hotels somehow validate the apparitions? This is not only unclear, but goes directly against the local bishop’s directives.

But Archbishop Hoser was just getting warmed up. The interviews got more confusing, both in Aleteia and the Italian daily newspaper Il Giornale, as summarized in the Croatian church news site Crkva Na Kamenu.[9]

Taken together, his statements amount to: Official pilgrimages are allowed, but they are not really allowed because more study is required; the cult of Medjugorje is fine, but must be distinguished from the apparitions; you can go there to pray to the Blessed Mother, but you don’t need permission to do so anyway; all the problems seem to have been resolved, but the matter of the “visionaries” has not yet been resolved; the decrees of the local bishop against diocesan pilgrimages are no longer in force, but it is not known who annulled them.

Not surprisingly, the day after the December 7 interview appeared, the Holy Father accepted his own envoy’s retirement (Archbishop Hoser turned 75 on November 27, 2017). What did the Pope of surprises do next? In late May, 2018, he sent Hoser back to Medjugorje with a new name tag, Special Apostolic Visitor. Apart from simply visiting, its meaning is unclear. The Medjugorje movement naturally interprets this as de facto Church approval. At least from the optics point of view, they have a point.

As with most disputes in the Church, this one hinges on authority. The authority of the local bishop has been the object of non-stop calumny, as was his predecessor. These attacks are well documented in The Medjugorje Deception by E. Michael Jones, and Medjugorje Revisited by Donal Foley. (Full disclosure: I wrote the Preface.) The question then becomes, why do people still flock there and hold enthusiastically pro-Medjugorje conferences everywhere in defiance of that authority?

We return to the perfect storm. Catholics everywhere are hungry for truth. Men have a basic capacity for God, capax dei, as St. Augustine put it. So when a facsimile of the real thing comes along, some will fall for it, despite contrary directives from the Church. As St. Paul foretold, “For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” (2 Tim 4:3).

In a time when the springtime for Christianity promised by St. Pope John Paul II feels, at least on the surface, more like the frigid fall, Catholics feel like the Barque of Peter is rudderless. They are eager for solidity and clarity. Significantly, the attraction to Medjugorje is highest in countries where the Faith is weakest. Hence, tour companies do brisk business in places like Canada, Italy, England, Ireland, and many parts of the United States.

Pope Francis was asked about the Ruini Commission Report during a press conference on his flight back from Fatima on May 13, 2017.[10] “The report has its doubts,” His Holiness opined. “I personally am more negative; I prefer the Madonna as Mother, our Mother, and not a woman who’s the head of a telegraphic office, who everyday sends a message at such hour. This is not the Mother of Jesus. And these presumed apparitions don’t have a lot of value.” The word he uses for “negative” in Italian—cattivo—means nasty, bad, or wicked. Immediately after this, he described the report as “very, very good” and soon after, “very well done.”[11]

Much is made of the first seven apparitions, which now represent the last hope of adepts for approval. The official Diocese of Mostar-Duvno account of that first week signals the opposite of approval. If ten percent of this is true, the first week’s visions have a zero percent chance of getting Church approval.

Medjugorje supporters are in a bind. As with any private revelation, if the Church approves it, no Catholic has to accept it. If the Church condemns it, all Catholics must reject it.

Patrick Coffin is the cofounder of CoffinNation.com, and the author of The Contraception Deception, and host of The Patrick Coffin Show.