IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring
By Junno Arocho Esteves
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis has named as apostolic
visitor to Medjugorje the Polish archbishop he had initially sent to the town
as his personal envoy to study the pastoral needs of the townspeople and of the
thousands of pilgrims who flock to the site of the alleged Marian apparitions.
The pope appointed Archbishop Henryk Hoser, the retired archbishop of
Warsaw-Praga, Poland, to be apostolic visitor to Medjugorje,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, for an indefinite period, the Vatican announced May 31.
“The mission of the apostolic visitor has the aim of
assuring a stable and continuous accompaniment of the parish community of
Medjugorje and of the faithful who go there in pilgrimage, whose needs require
special attention,” the Vatican announcement said.
Greg Burke, director of the Vatican press office, told
journalists that Archbishop Hoser “will reside in Medjugorje” and
that his mission does not involve investigating the authenticity of the alleged
apparitions.
Archbishop Hoser’s mission “is strictly pastoral and
not doctrinal,” Burke said.
The Polish archbishop was appointed in February 2017 as the
pope’s special envoy to study the pastoral situation in Medjugorje.
At a news conference following his first visit, Archbishop
Hoser said that although he has no authority or expertise to discuss the
authenticity of the alleged
apparitions, it was clear that “there is a special spiritual climate”
in Medjugorje.
“The biggest miracle of Medjugorje are the
confessions” of hundreds of people each day, Archbishop Hoser told
reporters in April
2017
In 1981, six young people claimed that Mary had appeared to them. Some of the six say
Mary still appears to them and gives them messages each day, while others say
they see her only once a year now.
Diocesan commissions studied the alleged apparitions in 1982-1984
and again in 1984-1986, and the then-Yugoslavian bishops’ conference studied
them from 1987 to 1990. All three commissions concluded that they could not
affirm that a supernatural event was occurring in the town.
In 2010,
retired Pope Benedict XVI established
a papal commission to study the alleged apparitions; the commission was chaired by Cardinal
Camillo Ruini, retired papal vicar of Rome.
The
commission’s report has not been made public, although some of its points were
revealed after Pope Francis spoke about the commission’s work.
Pope
Francis acknowledged that pilgrims to the Marian site deserve spiritual care
and support, but he also expressed doubts about claims of the continuing
apparitions of Mary in Medjugorje.
During
his flight to Rome from Fatima, Portugal, in May 2017, the pope told
journalists that, regarding the Medjugorje commission’s work, “three
things need to be distinguished.”
“About
the first apparitions, when (the ‘seers’) were young, the report more or less
says that the investigation needs to continue,” the pope said, according
to the English translation posted on the Vatican website.
“Concerning
the alleged current apparitions, the report expresses doubts,” he said.
Furthermore, “personally, I am more ‘mischievous.’ I prefer Our Lady to be
a mother, our mother, and not a telegraph operator who sends out a message
every day at a certain time — this is not the mother of Jesus.”
Pope
Francis said his “personal opinion” is that “these alleged
apparitions have no great value.”
The
“real core” of the commission’s report, he said, is “the
spiritual fact, the pastoral fact” that thousands of pilgrims go to
Medjugorje and are converted. “For this there is no magic wand; this
spiritual-pastoral fact cannot be denied.”
After
the pope made his remarks, Servite Father Salvatore Perrella, a member of the
commission, told Catholic News Service, “The commission did not make a
definitive pronouncement.” However, he said, in discussing the apparitions
that supposedly began June 24, 1981, and continue today, the commission opted
to distinguish between what occurred in the first 10 days and what has occurred
in the following three decades.
“The
commission held as credible the first apparitions,” he said.
“Afterward, things became a little more complicated.”
The
Medjugorje commission recommended that Pope Francis lift the ban on official
diocesan and parish pilgrimages to Medjugorje and that he designate the town’s
parish Church of St. James as a pontifical shrine with Vatican oversight, the
Servite said.
Such
decisions would be “an intelligent pastoral choice,” Father Perrella
said, and they could be made whether or not the church officially recognizes
the apparitions as “worthy of belief.” Allowing pilgrimages and
designating the church as a shrine would be a recognition of the prayer,
devotion and conversion millions of people have experienced at Medjugorje.
At the
same time, he said, it would ensure that “a pastor and not a travel
agency” is in charge of what happens there.
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