Apparitions of Our Lady of Medjugorje

The apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje began in June 1981, when six young people from Bosnia and Herzegovina reported visions of Mary on the hill of Podbrdo. Unlike Fatima or Lourdes, these apparitions went on for decades and the Church’s process of discernment was extraordinarily long. This article examines the original testimonies of the six visionaries, the 10 secrets revealed, and the position of the Magisterium up to the Imprimatur of 2024.

(Bosnia, Diocese of Mostar).

Medjugorje and the Diocese of Mostar: the geographical context, the hill of Podbrdo, and the villages of Bijakovići

In the Croatian language, the name Bosnia means located in the mountains and refers to the region. The settlement, made up of scattered villages, including Bijakovići, the site of the apparitions, lies within a ring of hills. Today Medjugorje represents a concentration of all the values, all the oppositions, and all the misunderstandings inherent in the ambiguities of apparitions, for the Church as much as for the scientific world.

Retelling the story

This plateau of Medjugorje, a place where so many conversions take place and where there is so much generosity, remains on the margins, despite the sympathies of more than a hundred bishops, of pilgrims, and even of Saint John Paul II, who had expressed the desire to go to that place and had repeated an invitation to visit it. We are in Yugoslavia, in the Croatian and Catholic part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, dominated by communist Serbia, which ruled the country.

On June 24, 1981, more than a kilometer from the church, two girls, Ivanka (fifteen) and Mirjana (sixteen), residents of Sarajevo, on vacation at their family’s country house, are walking and resting on the hill of Podbrdo.

On the first day of vacation they relax listening to music. They have bought cigarettes to try tobacco, which they enjoy together during the long summer evenings. On the way back, at the crossroads of the Three Paths, at the gates of the town, they see a luminous figure on the hill to their right, about 200 meters away. It is Our Lady, murmurs Ivanka, who had just lost her mother. She does not know. It cannot be Our Lady, protests Mirjana, the more thoughtful of the two. Fear, however, seizes the two girls, who run away. When they dare to confide what they saw, they are laughed at. They come back that same afternoon, around 6:30 p.m., together with Milka (14 years old), who is going to bring back the flock she left grazing on a heath 400 meters from the village. The three girls climb the hill without seeing anything unusual, but on the way back, shortly before reaching the village, Ivanka sees again, while the sheep return to the fold on their own.

Something similar happens to Vicka (sixteen). A routine examination in Mostar in the morning and the nap on her return made her miss the walk arranged with the other friends in the early afternoon. The girl sees. Right beside her, about a hundred meters away. As she runs home with Maria, she meets two companions: Ivan Dragičević (sixteen), who is carrying a sack of new potatoes, and Ivan Ivanković (twenty years old, who “sees” that day, but from a distance). The two boys also see. But Ivan Dragičević, frightened, runs away and loses his sack of potatoes as he jumps over a fence. As for the older Ivan, he is bewildered and will see nothing more. The four girls, on the other hand, Ivanka, Mirjana, Milka, and Vicka, watch the figure from afar: a woman who seems to be carrying a child in her right arm and who seems to be beckoning them to come closer. But the girls do not dare to move.

The next day, Thursday, June 25, five of them go back there: Ivanka, Mirjana, Vicka together with little Jakov (ten years old) and Maria Pavlović, Milka’s sister, who was working the previous time. This time the attraction wins out. They climb the hill quickly, even though there are many stones and bushes. They meet Ivan, shy and solitary, coming by another path. In this way the group of six visionaries is definitively formed. Here they are at the foot of the apparition, now quite close, in a small cloud that stands a meter above the ground. They see very clearly the luminous silver-gray dress, the wavy black hair under the white veil, and her crown: it is made up of twelve stars that are not connected in any way. Her blue eyes look at the children with tenderness. Ivanka, the orphan, asks: “Where is my mother”?. She is happy. She is with me. Her voice is sweet like music or like bells ringing, the children specify. “Give us a sign”, Mirjana asks, “otherwise no one will believe”.

On Friday, June 26, around 6:15 p.m., an unusual light drew a large crowd, about two thousand or perhaps even three thousand people, while the visionaries wait below, at the spot where they saw for the first time. But as soon as they see the figure, they climb the hill. The crowd sees them coming. Vicka is given holy water. She sprinkles the apparition abundantly: If you are the Gospa, stay with us; if not, go away. She smiles. Why have you come here and what do you want from us?, Ivanka asks, “there are many people here who believe”. “I too have come so that you may be converted and make peace among this people”.

The immediate context of 1981: the first apparitions on the hill of Podbrdo, the message of the Gospa, and the local clashes

There are many clashes among the villages of Medjugorje. As a result there were injuries and even three deaths shortly before the war, at the place where the church with the two bell towers was built soon afterward. The Gospa adds: “I come to convert and reconcile the whole world“. May she give us a sign of her presence, someone in the crowd asks. “Blessed are those who believe without seeing”. These words of the Gospel (Jn 20:29) are her only answer. What is your name?, Mirjana asks. “I am the Most Holy Virgin Mary”. Then she repeats these words a decade before the civil war: “Peace! Peace! Peace! Be reconciled”.

On Saturday, June 27, the police took the visionaries to Čitluk, a town about 2 km away, in order to dissuade them. But Dr. Ante Vujevic declares them perfectly sane. The children leave quickly and manage to reach the hill at the appointed hour: 6:30 p.m. That day, Ivan has a vision for himself, farther down.

Two Franciscans are present at the moment of the apparition. At their request, Vicka asks the Virgin: “What do you want the priests to do”?. “Let them believe firmly in the faith and help you“. Why do you not appear to everyone?. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jn 20:29). At a certain point, she disappeared and then reappeared. Everyone greeted her return by singing a popular song: You Are All Beautiful. Vicka insists: What do you want these people to do?. The third time, the Gospa answers: “Let those who do not see believe as those who see”. It is a message of faith and peace in this village torn apart by internal divisions, which finds itself in a nation torn apart even more.

June 28, 1981 (the fifth day): the parish priest Jozo Zovko and the beginning of the parish’s accompaniment of the apparitions

On Sunday, June 28 (the fifth day), the parish priest, Brother Jozo Zovko, of the Order of Friars Minor, who was taking part in a retreat near Zagreb, came back knowing nothing and discovered the event. His parochial vicar, Brother Zrinko Cuvalo, had already recorded a questioning of the visionaries on the rectory’s tape recorder. The parish priest goes on methodically forming his own opinion. That day, 10,000 to 15,000 people gather on the hill. A tape recorder records the words of the Gospa, which the visionaries repeat bit by bit because they are the only ones who hear them: “Go in the peace of God“, she says before rising and disappearing.

On June 29, the police again took the visionaries away, and this time to the hospital in Mostar (the capital and the episcopal see). They make them wait between the psychiatric hospital and the morgue. Mirjana is shaken, but Vicka is bold and, smiling, says: “We know very well that sooner or later we are all going to die”. Doctor Dzuda confirms their psychological balance. Returning in time for the apparition, the girls receive this message: There is only one God. Believe with strength and confidence.

That day, a father was carrying in his arms his three-year-old son, who was going into septicemia. At the beginning of July the child recovered. This is the first of many cures that would soon appear. In 1986, 291 miraculous cures were recorded at the rectory.

The police put pressure on the families so that their children would not go to the hill: otherwise the parents will have trouble and will not be able to go back to work in Germany and earn a living for their families. But on June 30, the police send two young women to kindly propose to the visionaries that they take a ride in a car. The aim of this whole operation is to keep them from getting back in time for the hour of the apparition.

The visionaries enjoy this outing, but the closer evening comes, the more they insist on going back. When they come near the hill, which they recognize while still about 3 km from it, on the other side of the valley, little Jakov grows upset: If we do not stop, I am going to jump. The car stops. The boy runs up to the high ground, facing the hill where the waiting crowd is gathering, and sees, with every distance annulled. “Would you be angry if we waited for you in the church”?, asks Mirjana, who wants to reconcile the apparition and obedience. “Yes, the Gospa answers, at the same time”!.

On the way back, they pass by the parish house, where the parish priest questions them and records their words again. The interrogations, preserved in the Episcopal Palace, were published in approximate form in two opposing versions and then reissued more rigorously thanks to Daria Klanac. Wednesday, July 1 (the eighth day if we count the distant apparition of June 24, which the visionaries regard as a preamble), during the afternoon, the police car takes the visionaries away. But at the moment of the apparitions, the bars of the vehicle disappear and the children have a brief apparition.

The interrogations of July 1981: the persecution of the visionaries by the communist authorities and the position of the diocese

On Thursday, July 2, the visionaries feel persecuted while their families feel threatened. Ruža, Maria’s sister, goes to consult the parish priest and then brings the six visionaries to the rectory at 5:30 p.m. There they have an apparition, in the absence of the parish priest Jozo Zovko, who was in the church preparing for the Mass to which he had summoned the people. Unlike the hill, the church is a place where worship is permitted. The visionaries arrive there at 6:00 p.m. Thus begins the daily ritual that is still repeated. The fervor is great. No one has ever prayed so deeply.

The parish priest invites them to fast for three days on bread and water in order to ask for light and discernment. He gives the floor to little Jakov: “Today I asked the Gospa to give us a sign: she only nodded her head, like this [affirmative] and then disappeared“. On Friday, July 3, in the afternoon, Jozo Zovko is praying fervently in the church, because the tension is strong and the Marxist dictatorship offers no concessions: Suddenly, the priest says, I heard a voice: Go out and protect the children. On going out, he sees them coming running from the fields: The police are after you, hide!

The police, who were on their heels, arrive soon afterward. The children manage to hide just as the police question the parish priest: “Have you seen six children?“. The priest points out the direction in which they were fleeing. The police keep on this false trail while the children have their second apparition in the Parish House. The Gospa, very happy, says to them: Do not be afraid, you will have the strength to bear everything.

Saturday, July 4, is a day of loss for the visionaries because they find themselves torn between the police prohibitions and the apparition. Exhausted by the anguish they live through every day, they believe they have understood that this tenth apparition will also be the last. The apparition took place inside the church, the official refuge of the religious freedom guaranteed by liberal Marxist doctrine, with the idea that, in order to avoid a fearful clandestinity, it is better to concentrate that freedom in a public and controllable place. This is the oasis in which the parish now gathers with unprecedented fervor to celebrate the daily Mass. The apparitions continue. Two important events are added in the month of July:

• The parish priest discreetly enters into ecstasy together with the visionaries. Some observe him, but they will only reveal it later.

• The parish priest invites the inhabitants of the various surrounding villages, at odds with one another at that moment, to peace and reconciliation, according to the message of the Gospa. The accumulated hatred dissolves thanks to prayer. In mid-July, mutual forgiveness and the warm outpourings between old enemies turn the Balkans of Medjugorje into a land of unanimity and fraternity.

The sermons of Friar Jozo Zovko become more and more inspired, but unsuspected by the police discreetly present. Unfortunately, on July 11, the parish priest recalls the Jewish people put to the test in the desert for forty years: only forty years had passed since Dictator Tito took power. He was therefore preaching revolt. He was arrested on August 17. Nevertheless, the parish resembles the most fervent monastery: daily Mass, the Rosary, fasting on bread and water twice a week despite work.

No one knows what more to do for God and for mutual help. Incredible phenomena begin to happen. At the end of July, the word mir (peace) appears written in the sky. Someone takes a Polaroid and circulates it around the country. The bishop, a man of good heart, visits the parish on July 25 and then on August 8. Despite this, proceedings are brought against Brother Jozo. On August 9, he is summoned by the police and intimidated. On August 17, they arrested him and then sentenced him to a long imprisonment, from which he was released only the following year, thanks to thousands of petitions coming from Italy.

Other convictions fall upon the Franciscans and the parishioners. The communist press speaks out against the apparitions, even though Bishop Žanić replies twice. Glas Koncila, the Croatian Catholic newspaper of Zagreb, publishes its protest against the slander the press is writing about the visionaries. The Church tries to deal with all this.

The Franciscan Tomislav Vlašić takes over the post that previously belonged to Fr. Jozo Zovko, now imprisoned, and therefore takes charge of the pastoral administration of the parish and finds himself working on several fronts: spiritual life, calm and inspired preaching, the welcoming of visitors, and the awakening of the charisms and of mutual help. Order and discretion are exemplary. Relations with the police are courteous and firm. The apparitions are no longer public. They now take place only in a room next to the sacristy that until then served as a storeroom and that now becomes the chapel of the apparitions for the six visionaries, while the assembly prays without being able to see the ecstasy. From the end of the year on, Balkanization reappears. The bishop, Msgr. Žanić, until then in such good harmony with the parish priest of Medjugorje that Jozo Zovko considered him more enthusiastic than himself, took up again the conflict that has divided the Franciscan clergy (the majority) and the secular clergy since 1942.

The conflict between the Franciscans of Medjugorje and the Diocese of Mostar: ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the approval of the apparitions

The international prestige that the apparitions confer on the Franciscans once again stirs up the passions of their adversaries and makes even the slightest hiccup swell out of all proportion. The development of this conflict, with its centuries-old roots, which the devil exploits brilliantly as the agent of all divisions, grew so much worse as to make life impossible for those who pastorally served the immense movement of conversion and spiritual deepening that arose in Medjugorje. The friars went on persevering in silence, discretion, and obedience, even though they had to face a difficult and at times desperate situation.

This perpetual misunderstanding between absolute authority and the humble request of priests who are continually replaced and paralyzed, eager to serve the charisms (prayers, conversions, fasts, self-giving, ecumenical openings), was reported in the annual chronicle of R. Laurentin (Dernières Nouvelles de Medjugorje, 17 vols.), and published in Austria until the author ceased this activity at the request of the bishop of Mostar, whose benevolent renunciation was confirmed in 1993 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, faithful to its role of confirming the authority of the bishops.

The apparitions of Medjugorje and their continual call to conversion, to prayer, and to peace fit within the spiritual horizon traced by the encyclical Redemptoris Mater of John Paul II, which presents Mary as a maternal presence and guide of the Church on her way to Christ.

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