ARTICLES

Is Medjugorje Fact or Fraud?

LOCAL CRITICS, VATICAN QUESTION APPARITIONS

By Christopher Zehnder

Since 1982, millions of pilgrims have traveled to the small Bosnian town of Medjugorje, where, allegedly, the Mother of God appears to a select group of seers. While many assert that these alleged apparitions are the most significant spiritual event of our century, others describe them as a hoax and scam. Still others ascribe the origin of these apparitions to the Devil.

Rick Salbato, head of the San Jose-based Unity Publishing, Inc, is a fierce critic of Medjugorje. He has joined forces with Philip Kronzer to expose the "deception" of Medjurgorje through literature and videos. Kronzer, a successful businessman with $12 million in assets, has produced two videos on the Medjugorje apparitions, together with British film producer, Network 5 International, and a team of researchers.

The videos, "Visions on Demand" and "Divine or Deceived?", were filmed on location in Medjugorje and Rome and feature such well-known Catholic authors and Medjugorje critics as Michael Davies and E. Michael Jones, editor of the Catholic journal, Fidelity. "Visions on Demand" portrays the Medjurgorje apparitions as a font of lies and disobedience to Church authority, while "Divine or Deceived?" attempts to show the Marian center as a cover for an immense money smuggling operation.

The latter video not only portrays the visionaries as liars and their Franciscan promoters as mind-control manipulators, it also seeks to demonstrate that the visions continue in open defiance of the authority of the bishop of Mostar and of the Vatican.

The video quotes a 1985 statement made by the bishops' conference of Yugoslavia that there is "no evidence whatsoever of supernatural phenomena at Medjugorje" and that the visions are the "fruit of fabrications, fraud, and disobedience to the Church." The statement was based on the findings of a commission formed by Pavao Zanic, bishop of Mostar, the diocese to which Medjugorje belongs.

According to the video, in response to the bishops' statement, the Holy See's Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith instructed the bishops of Italy to limit pilgrimages from Italy to Medjurgorje.

In an e-mail to the Faith, Steve Shawl, the webmaster for a Medjugorje Web site (medjugorje.org/index.html), charged that the quote attributed to the Yugoslavian bishops in "Visions on Demand" is a "gross exaggeration and misrepresentation of the commission's findings. The date of the document was 1991, and the finding issued declared that a supernatural basis could not be proven. It did not say it did not exist. This leaves the matter open to further investigation, which was once again confirmed and affirmed by the latest statement from the Holy See dated June 1998." Shawl further asserted that this 1998 statement permitted pilgrimages to the shrine at Medjugorje.

The statement to which Shawl referred is from a letter written by Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, secretary to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The letter does say pilgrimages are permissible, but not if they represent the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje as authentic: "As for the credibility of the 'apparitions' in question, this Dicastery respects what was decided by the bishops of the former Yugoslavia in the Declaration of Zadar, April 10, 1991: 'On the basis of the investigations so far, it can not be affirmed that one is dealing with supernatural apparitions and revelations.' Since the division of Yugoslavia into different independent nations it would now pertain to the members of the Episcopal Conference of Bosnia-Hercegovina to eventually reopen the examination of this case, and to make any new pronouncements that might be called for.... Finally, as regards pilgrimages to Medjugorje, which are conducted privately, this Congregation points out that they are permitted on condition that they are not regarded as an authentification of events still taking place and which still call for an examination by the Church."

In a declaration issued July 25, 1987, Bishop Zanic of Mostar tried to put the Mejugorje controversy into perspective. Certain "impatient people," without Church authorization, had declared the events at Medjugorje to be authentic, he stated. Therefore, "various authorities demanded that pilgrimages should not be organized, that the Church's judgement should be awaited. This was done on 24 March 1984, when the Commission of Medjugorje warned against it...Then in October of the same year, the Conference of Bishops declared that there should be no more officially organized pilgrimages to Medjugorje. By 'officially organized' is meant gathering or coming in a group. That had no effect either. Then the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, on 23 May 1985, sent a letter to the Conference of Italian Bishops asking them to try to reduce the number of organized pilgrimages, and likewise to minimize all forms of propaganda. That too bore no fruit. Finally, when the second commission was formed, Cardinal Franjo Kuharic and the Bishop of Mostar, in the name of the Conference of Bishops of Yugoslavia, declared publicly on 29 January 1987: 'For this reason it is forbidden to organize pilgrimages or other manifestations motivated by the supernatural character attributed to the events in Medjugorje.'"

"Visions on Demand" also examines alleged inconsistencies in the visionaries' statements. The Gospa (as the visionaries called Our Lady), according to the video, uttered falsehoods and challenged the authority of the bishops. On one occasion, she even seemed to make heretical statements concerning the nature of the Church.

According to the video, in the early 1980s the Pope ordered the expulsion of Father Ivica Vego from the Franciscan order for seducing a nun and later living with her. Between 1981 and 1982, the Gospa appeared thirteen times to the seers stating that Father Vego was innocent, and the bishop was wrong. "The bishop is to blame for the disorder in Herzegovina," said the Gospa. "Vego is not to blame. If they expel him from the Franciscan order, may he remain courageous."

Steve Shawl calls this story "tabloidism," but Bishop Zanic acknowledges it in a 1990 declaration on Medjugorje. Shawl denies another allegation (again, witnessed to by Zanic) made in "Visions on Demand": that visionary Maria Pavlovic claimed to receive a message in 1988 from Gospa stating that Father Tomislav Vlasic, the visionaries' spiritual director, was to establish a community of young men and women who would live and work together in Parma, Italy. According to the video, when the community became something of a scandal to Medjugorje promoters (because of allegations of sexual misconduct), Pavlovic stated in a signed declaration that her "first declaration does not correspond to the truth. I have never asked the Madonna for any approval for the community begun by Father Tomislav Vlasic."

"Divine or Deceived?" charges that the Gospa teaches that all religions are equal. Since the statement embodying this teaching was not quoted directly, this reporter went to the Medjugorje web site, and found the following "revelation," given October 1, 1981. The seers ask, "Are all religions the same?," to which the Gospa replies, "Members of all faiths are equal before God. God rules over each faith just like a sovereign over his kingdom. In the world, all religions are not the same because all people have not complied with the commandments of God. They reject and disparage them."

Both "Visions on Demand" and "Divine or Deceived?" argue that the priests who worked with the Medjugorje seers are of questionable character. The case of Tomislav Vlasic has already been mentioned. Fr. Jozo Zovko, O.F.M., to whom the seers first told their stories, was, alleges the videos, a leader of prayer groups that tied charismatic prayer to sensitivity training techniques which break down inhibitions. It is suggested that Father Jozo used such techniques on the six visionaries and controlled them and the visions for many years. The video also charges that, though he has had no faculties from the Bishop of Mostar since 1989, Father Jozo has, until recently, offered the sacraments in Medjugorje.

The visionaries, too, according to the videos, are not living as one would expect from those who have, or who still do, hold daily conversation with the Mother of God. The videos allege that the seers live in luxury, both in Medjugorje and abroad, and that, in Medjugorje, they own houses on what is known as "Millionaires Row." Seer Ivan Dragicevic, it is said, drives a Mercedes and jets around on speaking tours, addressing crowds (through an interpreter) in England and the United States. In 1994, he married a former Miss Massachusetts, Lauren Murphy, in Boston.

Readers who wish to judge "Visions on Demand" and "Divine or Deceived?" for themselves, or seek other information on Medjugorje, may contact Unity Publishing, Inc. at 1504 Dell Ave., Campbell, CA 95008; (408) 376-2714; fax (408) 376-2715; web site: http://www.starharbor.com/unity.

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