Scientific, Medical, and Psychological Studies of Medjugorje

The scientific and psychological examinations

René Laurentin met Dr. Stopar, a Croatian psychiatrist who had been present in Medjugorje since the beginning of his research. This doctor hypnotized Marija, who proved very receptive, and made her reveal the secrets that the young woman had not confided to anyone. When René Laurentin was scandalized by this violation of conscience, Dr. Stopar replied:

“Yes, I did, but I keep everything strictly under professional secrecy”. 

In 1984, René Laurentin got in touch with Professor Henri Joyeux, who at the time had managed, at his request, to obtain permission to give a lecture on Medjugorje in Montpellier, France. Laurentin then replied: You may give the lecture, but I ask you to carry out an investigation and electroencephalograms to study the ecstasy of the visionaries. Professor Joyeux assembled an effective multidisciplinary team and carried out this study in 1984-1985. This investigation was conducted under heroic conditions, with the portable equipment of the time. But one of the two machines was damaged during the journey and could not be used. Thanks to the other equipment, however, it was possible to obtain tracings of the visionaries’ brain activity before, during, and after the apparition. During the ecstasy, the visionaries are neither asleep nor dreaming, and that is what the tracing shows. Nor do they have convulsions, which would explain the visions. 

The combination of these tests, of the synchronous electro-oculograms, and of other examinations established the synchrony of the visionaries, which until then had been disputed, and, above all, established that these people were not living in a pathological state. This put an end to Charcot’s theory, which had become official at the beginning of the twentieth century, according to which apparitions are a hysterical phenomenon. He had drawn this conclusion after managing to induce an ecstatic disconnection by means of hypnosis, performed on some hysterical subjects, particularly sensitive people. All this had limited his study to this psychiatric form of disconnection. 

The conclusions of the study were drawn up by Professor Joyeux and his team, and by R. Laurentin as regards the spiritual implications, and they were published in 1985 under the title Études médicales et scientifiques sur les apparitions de Medjugorje. 

Shortly afterward, beginning in 1985, some Italian doctors carried out various tests, whose results they made public in 1986 in a collective volume compiled by L. Frigerio, G. Mattalia, and L. Bianchi: Dossier scientifico su Medjugorje. Studies of this kind, more broadly interdisciplinary, confirmed those conducted by Dr. Joyeux. Meanwhile, the two medical teams were brought together in Milan by Dr. Farina, who first established and then chaired the medical team of ARPA (the Regina Pacis Association). In 1985 he had sent a double series of ten medical conclusions and ten theological conclusions favorable to Medjugorje. 

The Pope sent these reports to Cardinal Ratzinger, and they, together with the other data collected, played their part in the rejection of the negative judgment proposed by Archbishop Zanic. In 1998, Father Ivan Landeka, OFM, parish priest of Medjugorje, invited a group of fourteen Austrian and Italian doctors and psychologists to carry out psychophysiological research on the visionaries of Medjugorje, whom he had mobilized for that occasion. The visionaries underwent many psychological tests, but no electronic tests: no electroencephalogram or electro-oculogram (I Veggenti di Medjugorje. Ricerca psicofisiologica, 1998). 

Professor Joyeux and his team, who returned to Medjugorje many times, asked to be allowed to carry out new tests with more modern devices capable of recording not just eight curves but as many as thirty, with which it would have been possible to study several visionaries in synchrony in order to verify the simultaneity of their entry into ecstasy and its development. However, the visionaries were not informed of these tests because of the lack of a common language with Father Landeka. 

Regrettably, one of the members of that team stated publicly that one of the visionaries was not really in ecstasy. In this regard, Fr. Laurentin felt obliged to clarify what had happened in an article that appeared in Chrétiens Magazine, stating that the visionary, Marija, had shown symptoms of ecstasy, although at times she remained less in contact than the others, because there are different degrees of disconnection in the ecstasy of the various visionaries tested around the world. 

The steps taken by Professor Joyeux and René Laurentin to obtain permission to carry out more effective electronic tests came to nothing, especially since the visionaries have always refused these tests (particularly Jakov and Vicka). In fact, they hate them, because these tests make them feel like laboratory rats. Moreover, even the psychological tests to which they were subjected did nothing but reinforce their irony and their skepticism toward these tests, which Father Landeka had strongly urged them to undergo.

The medical healings 

René Laurentin followed the study of the healings recorded by the parish and published them in the work Apparitions de la Vierge Marie à Medjugorje:

• 291 healings up to October 19, 1986. 
• More than 300 by 1987. 

In addition, he placed these notebooks at the disposal of ARPA, which began to carry out a methodical study of the healings and set up an office in charge of the investigations in Medjugorje. After a few months, they decided to carry out more thorough examinations of seven particularly significant and well-documented cases. By then they had already bought a property to house their investigations office, but shortly after 1990 ARPA had to stop its activity because of the war. 

René Laurentin was in contact with Dr. Korljan, a psychiatrist and a well-known figure in Croatia, also at the political level. The Yugoslav Bishops’ Conference charged him with forming a scientific commission for the medical and psychological study of the visionaries and the healings. But he had been invited neither to preside over nor to collaborate regularly with the commission of theologians. He regretted occupying this marginal position. 

He had recognized the normality of the visionaries in the sphere of relations with the public. He was particularly impressed by the recovery of Damir Coric (a healing regarded as miraculous by the Italian doctors): this patient suffered from internal hydrocephalus and had sustained irreversible brain damage. Under treatment since March 21, 1980, he underwent five surgeries and was subsequently sent home, having been declared incurable, on May 6, 1981. He was totally dependent and bedridden, absolutely unable to walk, feed himself, or converse. He communicated only by a slight nod of the head. 

Shortly before July 1981, his family took him to Medjugorje for the first time, and then a second time at the end of July. René Laurentin had often met Dr. Korljan together with Archbishop Franic, his friend. Dr. Korljan showed René Laurentin the examinations carried out on Damir Coric before and after his recovery. They attested to a cerebral reconstitution, a probative finding of the utmost importance. Unfortunately, Dr. Korljan passed away. Because the commission did not adopt his conclusions, its members declared that the supernatural (and they meant the word in the sense of extraordinary, miraculous) had not been proven. Dr. Korljan, on the other hand, considered it proven. Coric had also been examined by Dr. Antonacci of ARPA on May 3, 1987, and he had noted the lucidity of this man, who had previously been bedridden and abandoned to the worst prognoses for his health in 1981. 

Damir went back to his former job in Mostar. Dr. Korljan’s death in the aftermath of the war was reported in the newspapers as a notable event, but no one bothered to recover his studies. The study of the healing burst like a soap bubble, and René Laurentin was unable to find in Medjugorje the register of the three hundred healings that had occurred in the parish. 

Fortunately, Professor Gildo Spaziante went back to studying the documents that he himself had collected, both on his own and with the help of ARPA, and later published a volume that gives a positive assessment of the events of Medjugorje. On the basis of eight healings that he studied in his books (Studi per Medjugorje: guarigioni straordinarie, 1993; Malattie e guarigioni a Medjugorje, 2003), the professor published a study of Damir’s case in particular on April 7, 1983, together with numerous documents and the certificate of healing, but without the CT scans that were in Dr. Korljan’s possession and without specifying the exact date of the healing in August 1981. 

René Laurentin followed the Medjugorje healings in his annual volumes entitled Dernières Nouvelles, and later in La Vierge apparaît-elle à Medjugorje?, in which he gives even more precise information on the case of Damir Coric. 

Damir was 16 years old at the time. He underwent five surgeries before being sent home on May 6, 1981. Shortly before July 1981, his family took him to Medjugorje for the first time, and then a second time at the end of July. This time:

“When I came out of the church, Vicka began to pray for me, and at that moment I felt as if a force were invading me”

Damir Coric testifies. The healing takes place gradually:

“I was able to take my first steps at Christmas. I was also beginning to articulate words again”.

At Easter the recovery was complete. In October 1983, he went back to work in a compressor factory in Mostar. He was judged fit for that work at the time of the medical examination. For more information on this healing, see the work La Vierge apparaît-elle à Medjugorje (1991) by Fr. René Laurentin.

The scientific studies on the Medjugorje visionaries complement the theological discernment proposed in John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Mater, which recognizes the importance of evaluating Marian manifestations in the light of reason, faith, and the Magisterium of the Church.

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