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Marian Apparitions - Medjugorje

rjmrjmrjm

Gone But Not Forgotten
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I have just got off the phone to my mother who has recently returned from a trip to Medjugorje - a popular Marian shrine in Bosnia. Apparently Our Lady has been appearing there for the past 25 years and now with the cessation of the war it is becoming increasingly popular.

For more info try: http://www.medjugorje.org/

My mother (a devout Catholic) told me she had had an unusual experience. She saw the sun spin. She was walking up one of the hills in the area towards a popular spot for prayer and she said she noticed the sun behaving oddly in the sky. Bellow is a rough idea of what she said to me:

"Sun seems to develop an outer-rim, this rim spins at increasing speed then the circle of the sun goes white and rays spin out from it. The rays were blue/pink/grey and once I saw four orangey-yellow rays entend from the sun at the same time."

She told me that she didn't see any apparition of BVM and the nearest she got was a robed figure in the clouds (but she reckons that was just 'her eyes playing tricks' - her words. As for the sun-spinning, she couldn't explain it.

My mum is usually quite a sane person (ok... she's as insane as only a mother can be but not prone to hallucinations) so I was a little bit suprised that she would come out with this. She didn't mention any sort of 'spiritual-experience' to me but I wasn't on the phone long so i'll have to keep you posted when I get more time to question her.

Any questions people would like me to ask her (with her permission)?

EDIT: There seems to be a wealth of weird pictures on the web from Medjugorje, many look photo-shopped or just weird lens-flare but some are a lot harder to explain.
 
an uncle of mine has some pics from there, look strangely like a statue to me but his friend who took them swears blind they are real and true pics of the BVM, will try and see if i can get them scanned in and find out the story sometime.
 
I have a friend, a well-known author, who had exactly the same experience at Medjugorge.

By coincidence, a few days ago I posted the following on the "Fatima" thread which suggests that the Fatima "dance of the sun" was created by a special effects team:


"Fascinating theory as to how the Fatima visions were "created" here:

http://www.ovnis.atfreeweb.com/5b_fatim ... ns_sun.htm

The "dance of the Sun" has also been seen at Medjugorge. Whichever organisation did Fatima may also be involved here."

In order for this to work the skuy has to be fairly cloudy. Would your Mum remeber if it was cloudy at the time?
 
I'd like to know what technology available in 1917 (or for that matter in 2007) can cause a multitude of individuals to see the Sun appear to descend from the sky and then whip through the crowd....drying rain-soaked clothing in the process.

Much of the special effect also has to be viewable from several miles away.

In any case, if there was a real miracle at Fatima it seems to be the fact that the visions singlehandedly brought to its knees (literally, in adoration) Portugal's proto-Bolshevik Carbonarist government.
 
Apparently the Roman Cathoilc Church can't officialy rule on Medjugore because it's still happening.

Seems a bit odd.
 
rjmrjmrjm said:
Apparently the Roman Cathoilc Church can't officialy rule on Medjugore because it's still happening.

Seems a bit odd.

Strikes me as odd also. The Roman Catholic Church has often forbidden religious from attending various claimed Marian visionary gatherings and strongly admonished the laity against doing so.
 
Pope Benedict XVI unfrocks Medjugorje priest
Father Tomislav Vlasic, the priest who helped to turn the Bosnian town of Medjugorje into one of the Catholic Church's most visited shrines, has left the priesthood after being placed under investigation by the Vatican.
By Simon Caldwell
Published: 8:00AM BST 27 Jul 2009

Father Tomislav Vlasic, the former "spiritual director" to six visionaries who claim that the Virgin Mary visited them nearly 40,000 times over 28 years, has been laicised by Pope Benedict XVI a year after he was placed under investigation over allegations that he exaggerated the apparitions and had engaged in sexual relations with a nun.

While the Vatican has never given the shrine its formal blessing, an estimated 30 million pilgrims have visited Medjugorje in the last three decades and hundreds of thousands make the journey from Britain and Ireland each year. The unfrocking of Father Vlasic will come as a blow to Medjugorje followers worldwide who were hoping that the Vatican would one day legitimise the controversial shrine.

The Franciscan asked to leave the priesthood after the Vatican launched an investigation into allegations that he was guilty of sexual immorality with a nun which he then covered up.

He was also suspected of exagerating stories of the Virgin Mary's appearance and under formal investigation for alleged "dubious doctrine, the manipulation of consciences, suspect mysticism and disobedience towards legitimately issued orders".

Father Vlasic refused to co-operate with the investigation from the outset and he was banished to a monastery in L'Aquila, Italy, where he was forbidden to communicate with anyone, even his lawyers, without the permission of his superior. He has not commented on the allegations but told the Vatican that he felt wronged given he had turned Medjugorje into an international shrine and generated funds to build new churches.

It emerged on Sunday that he has chosen to leave the priesthood and his order, a move which has brought the investigation to an abrupt halt.

But the Pope has insisted that Father Vlasic observes a set of conditions on pain of excommunication which include a total ban on teaching Christian doctrine and giving spiritual direction.

There is also an "absolute prohibition of releasing declarations on religious matters, especially regarding the phenomenon of Medjugorje".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... riest.html
 
Mostar bishop reiterates rules for Medjugorje parish
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/storie ... 904306.htm

By Catholic News Service

MOSTAR, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNS) -- Confirming young people from the parish in the Bosnian town of Medjugorje, Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar-Duvno asked them not to behave as if the alleged Marian apparitions reported in the parish were real.

In late September, the bishop posted on his diocesan Web site an Italian translation of his homily from the June confirmation Mass, as well as letters to the Franciscan pastor of the Medjugorje parish and to another priest serving there.

Bishop Peric had told the young people that, during a visit to the Vatican early in the year, the top officials at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Vatican Secretariat of State confirmed they were telling anyone who asked that the Catholic Church has never recognized the alleged apparitions as authentic.

"Brothers and sisters, let us not act as if these 'apparitions' were recognized and worthy of faith," the bishop said in the homily he gave June 6.

"If, as Catholics, devoted sons and daughters of the church, we want to live according to the norms and the teaching of the church, glorifying the Holy Trinity, venerating Blessed Mary ... and professing all the church has established in the creed, we do not turn to certain alternative 'apparitions' or 'messages' to which the church has not attributed any supernatural character," Bishop Peric said.

After the confirmation Mass in Medjugorje, the bishop also made a pastoral visit to the parish and published the follow-up letters he had written to Franciscan Father Petar Vlasic, the pastor, and to Franciscan Father Danko Perutina, one of the parochial vicars.

The bishop praised Father Vlasic for the way he was handling what he called "the Medjugorje phenomenon," which began in 1981 when six young people -- Mirjana Dragicevic, Marija Pavlovic, Vicka Ivankovic, Ivan Dragicevic, Ivanka Ivankovic and Jakov Colo -- said they had seen Mary on a hillside near their town. Several of them say they continue to see Mary and receive messages from her.

In his letter, the bishop reaffirmed that priests from outside the parish cannot give conferences or lead retreats at the parish without written permission from his office and that no one can use parish facilities to promote the alleged apparitions or messages. The bishop specified that the pastor should ensure that Father Perutina stop offering comments on the messages Pavlovic claims to receive on the 25th of each month.

He also asked Father Vlasic to remove from the parish Web site all references to the parish and its church buildings as a shrine or sanctuary and to ban prayers allegedly dictated by Mary or suggested by her alleged messages from liturgies and prayer services inside the church, including public recitations of the rosary.

"We have enough official ecclesiastical intentions (pontifical, episcopal, missionary, etc.) and there is no need to turn arbitrarily to the presumed apparitions and messages and mix them with the public prayers of the church," he said.

In his letter to Father Perutina, who was assigned to the Medjugorje parish after completing a degree in Mariology at a pontifical university in Rome, Bishop Peric said he did not understand why the priest was publishing a commentary on the monthly message Pavlovic claims to receive.

"Gradually we have been able to distance the 'apparitions' and 'messages' from the parish church and church environs," the bishop said, but the fact that a Franciscan from the parish is commenting on the messages creates confusion.

"These are private messages to private people for private use," he said, ordering the Franciscan to cease commenting on or publicizing them in any way.
 
Vatican investigates Bosnia 'apparition' of Virgin Mary
By Mark Lowen
BBC News, Belgrade

The Vatican has announced a commission to investigate claims that the Virgin Mary appears on a daily basis in a town in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Six children first reported the apparition in the town of Medjugorje in June 1981.

However, the sightings have not yet received official recognition from the Catholic Church.

The 20-strong commission will report to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the top doctrinal body.

For almost 30 years, the Virgin Mary has been said to appear daily in Medjugorje, dressed sometimes in a grey dress and veil and sometimes in gold, crowned with stars and floating on a cloud.

It is said she speaks in Croatian, uttering the words: "I've come because there are many true believers here. I wish to be with you to convert and reconcile the whole world."

It is also said that three flashes of light precede her apparitions, during which the voices of the visionaries can no longer be heard.

But the Catholic Church has long debated the credibility of the sightings.

There was a recent visit by a cardinal from Vienna, Christoph Schoenberg.

But the bishop of neighbouring Mostar has frequently criticised unquestioning belief in the claims.

Until the commission reports back to the Church's top doctrinal body, believers are likely to continue to flock to this small Bosnian town.

Around 30 million are estimated to have visited since the first sighting of what they call "Our Lady".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8573576.stm
 
the roman catholic church won't authenticate a marian apparition because that would redirect what they claim as their direct hotline to god, and put it in the hands of the visionary. often times these visionaries are directed to build churches at these sites and collect donations directly and that also short circuits the church's hotline to the money which is something else they would rather not have happen.
so they will only tolerate it when it is too big for them to shut down.
interestingly ingo swann (preeminent remote viewer) has written a book recently on the marian visions and has concluded that this Lady is who she says she is. this inspired me to go to the catholic resale shop and buy a bunch of marian books (they don't know about me!!) my only comment is that mary often says that her son really loves us but can't wait to level us.
you figure it out.
 
Religious fervour: Medjugorje visionary visits RDS
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ire ... 41145.html
PAMELA DUNCAN and DAMIEN MURPHY

Fri, Feb 18, 2011

AT EXACTLY 4.40pm Irish time, Vicka Mijatovic, known as the smiling visionary, fell to her knees in front of a 2,000-strong crowd in the RDS in Dublin.

“When I kneel down you will know that Mary is really among us,” Ms Mijatovic told the attendees before clasping her hands in prayer, rocking back and dropping heavily to her knees.

The eldest of the six Medjugorje visionaries, Ms Mijatovic was just 16 when Our Lady is alleged to have appeared to her and five other children on June 25th, 1981. She claims to be visited by the Virgin Mary at 5.40pm local Bosnian time – 4.40pm GMT – every day.

As the time drew near, Ms Mijatovic took to the podium, telling the crowd that their pain was a gift from God.

“We need to pray and thank God for this gift, for this pain, for this sorrow and pray to God for the strength to carry on with this gift,” she said.

“Mary came tonight very happy and every night she comes she says hello to her son Jesus.

“The first message is prayer and peace and conversion and confession and fast,” she said.

Participants paid an entry fee of €5 for the event, which was organised by Marian Pilgrimages on the invitation of the Medjugorje Council of Ireland.

Following the event, members of the congregation clamoured at the front of the stage reaching out as she touched their hands and kissed some on the forehead.

One of those who joined the throng was Kathleen Dougan. “She touched my rosary beads; I was lucky,” she said. Asked if she had felt the presence of Mary, she added: “I can still feel her.”

“She had the vision there; you could hear a pin drop. I could feel Marys presence,” Gráinne Ievers from Blackrock said following the event.

Last year the Vatican opened an investigation into reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje, southern Bosnia, which have drawn more than 30 million pilgrims and divided the Catholic Church, headed by Italian cardinal Camillo Ruini. The investigation has not yet been concluded.
 
Faithful flock to Medjugorje on 30th anniversary of apparition
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 86839.html
DANIEL McLAUGHLIN in Medjugorje

Sat, Jun 25, 2011

PILGRIMS ARE flocking to Medjugorje to mark 30 years since a group of local teenagers claimed to have first seen a vision of the Virgin Mary, an event that has drawn tens of millions of people to this remote village in southern Bosnia.

Visitors from around the world will rise at dawn and climb the rocky Krizevac – or Cross Hill – to where Our Lady is said to have appeared, to start a day of commemorative events that many hope will aid Medjugorje’s bid for Vatican recognition as a site of special significance.

A Vatican commission led by influential Italian cardinal Camillo Ruini last year opened an inquiry into the authenticity of the apparitions. Some of the self-declared visionaries say that Mary still visits them every day and gives them messages to pass on to the world.

Disputes over the authenticity of the visions has caused sometimes bitter disputes between local clergymen and prompted warnings from the Vatican, but advocates were heartened when Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a close ally of Pope Benedict, made a private visit to Medjugorje in late 2009.

The village, which has grown at an extraordinary rate in recent years and is replete with hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops, was yesterday thronged with pilgrims who braved 35-degree heat to scale the steep and rugged hill and offer prayers to Our Lady.

“It was a long journey to get here but with prayer anything is possible,” said Tadas Bertulis (30), who endured a three-day bus ride from Lithuania to reach this once-obscure corner of Bosnia.

“Mary was with us on the road and She is with us here. I have no words to describe the feeling of being here,” he said, adding that a group of fellow Lithuanians were now walking from their Baltic homeland to Medjugorje and hoped to arrive in September.

Eileen O’Connor from Co Galway was on a “holy holiday” with relatives. “I have been to Medjugorje 20 times in 10 years. The first time, I came to Our Lady with a huge cross on my shoulder and it was lifted. So I have been saying thank you for that. There are so many people here – there seem to be many more than than usual. But it is peaceful and there is always so much joy here.”
 
It seems the place has a dark history:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 57708.html
MORE than a million people visit Medjugorje each year, thousands of them Irish, and most come to climb the hill where six locals claim to have first seen and spoken to the Virgin Mary in June 1981.

It is hard to find a pilgrim who does not speak of the peace and tranquillity of Cross Hill, site of the supposed apparitions that turned a remote and impoverished village into one of the most famous corners of Bosnia.

Few visitors make the short trip from Medjugorje to Surmanci. It is only a few miles from Cross Hill, but far removed from the guest houses, restaurants and souvenir shops of its revered neighbour.

There is deep quiet in this place, but only those who don’t know its history could speak of peace and tranquillity.

In August 1941, local members of the fascist Croat Ustashe organisation murdered some 600 Serb men, women and children in deep natural pits on this barren plateau. Ethnic cleansing may have entered the lexicon during the 1990s Balkan wars, but it was grimly familiar to a previous generation of families from this region.

In the 1940s, the rugged hills of Herzegovina saw vicious fighting between the Ustashe – who ruled Croatia as a Nazi puppet state – Serb nationalist Chetniks and the communist Partisans led by Josip Broz Tito, who would eventually prevail and govern Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.

Each side committed gruesome atrocities, including Tito’s Partisans, who slaughtered 30 Franciscan friars at Siroki Brijeg near Medjugorje, as punishment for supporting the Ustashe.

The Croat Catholic Church backed the Ustashe and its drive for an ethnically pure greater Croatia, and several priests and Franciscan monks were accused of heinous war crimes.

After the war, Tito sought to neutralise the bitterness between parts of the Yugoslav population by suppressing religion and nationalism. He depicted the inter-ethnic fighting as a simple struggle between fascist Ustashe and Chetniks and anti-fascist Partisans; the latter had won, fascism had been routed and so the roots of conflict had been removed.

In places like Medjugorje, though, the wounds never really healed. Croats felt humiliated at being forced to build a monument to the Ustashe’s Serb victims at Surmanci, while official Yugoslav history depicted the Franciscans executed by Partisans at Siroki Brijeg as fascist villains.

The apparitions began at a tricky time for Yugoslavia: the stabilising force that was Tito had died the previous year and the Catholic Solidarity movement was roiling communist Poland, inspired by a new east European pope, John Paul II.

The Yugoslav authorities immediately denounced reports of the visions – which occurred just before the 40th anniversary of the Surmanci massacre – as a “clerical-nationalist” conspiracy cooked up by Croat extremists.

Local Franciscans quickly took control of the Medjugorje phenomenon, declaring the children’s visions to be genuine and installing themselves as intercessors between the young “seers” and a Croat public that was clamouring for religious experience after years of official state atheism.
 
Apparitions of Mary
Beyond Belief
Listen in pop-out player
Since 2010 a Vatican commission has been investigating the alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina. An announcement is expected soon, amid concerns that the supernaturalclaims of six visionaries are getting out of the Vatican's control. Beginning in 1981, the apparitions purportedly continue daily, and thousands of pilgrims from all over the world travel to the small town each month to meet the alleged seers. What exactly are Marian apparitions and how have they been explained? What are some of the stories associated with them? Why have they become such a powerful tool for conversion over recent decades? Are they always an aid to religious devotion or can they lead to unhealthy superstition?

Broadcast Today 28 March 2016, 16:30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074x71z
 
My Father's mother was a devout Catholic and he told me that she said that one Easter morning she saw the sun dance.
She lived in Victoria all her life and I have no idea when this was and can't ask anyone now when it might have happened. Perhaps late 19th century early 20th.
 
Sadly ironic given they were on their way to Medjugorje.

Twelve people have been killed after a bus carrying Polish pilgrims veered off a road in Croatia on Saturday and ended up in a ditch.

All 32 surviving passengers are said to be injured, 19 of them seriously.

The trip, organised by the Brotherhood of St Joseph Catholic group, included three priests and six nuns. They were travelling to Medjugorje, a Catholic shrine in Bosnia. The passengers were all Polish adults, said the Polish Foreign Ministry.

The bus left from the Polish city of Czestochowa on Friday night following a prayer service. The passengers were from various regions of Poland, the foreign ministry said. The accident happened at around 05:40 local time (04:50 GMT) when the bus they were travelling in veered off the A4 road between Jarek Bisaski and Podvorec, north-east of Zagreb.

Poland's justice minister and prosecutor general have ordered the Warsaw Prosecutors Office to launch an investigation into the cause of the tragedy, and two Polish ministers are heading to Croatia in the wake of the incident.

It was initially reported that 11 people had been killed, but one more person died later in hospital.

"Some of the injured passengers are fighting for their lives," Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62448062
 
Vatican Oks devotion at shrine but queries messages received by visionaries.

The Vatican has given the green light for Catholics to continue flocking to a southern Bosnian village where children reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary, offering its approval for devotion in one of the most contested aspects of Roman Catholic practice in recent years.

In a detailed analysis after nearly 15 years of study, the Vatican’s doctrine office did not declare that the reported apparitions in Medjugorje were authentic or of supernatural origin.

And it flagged concerns about contradictions in some of the “messages” the alleged visionaries say they have received over the years.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/v...-virgin-mary-reportedly-appeared-1673746.html
 
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