If the Catholic Church recognizes as “worthy of belief” only the initial alleged apparitions of Mary at Medjugorje, it would be the first time the church distinguished between phases of a single event, but it also would acknowledge that human beings and a host of complicating factors are involved, said a theological expert in Mariology.
Servite Father Salvatore Perrella, president of the Pontifical Institute Marianum and a member of the commission now-retired Pope Benedict XVI established to study the Medjugorje case, said that although Pope Francis has not yet made a formal pronouncement on the presumed apparitions, “he thought it was a good idea to clear some of the fog.”
The pope’s remarks to journalists on May 13 on his flight from Portugal to Rome “were a surprise, but he told the truth,” Father Perrella told Catholic News Service on May 18.
“For four years, the commission established by Pope Benedict investigated, interrogated, listened, studied and debated this phenomenon of the presumed apparitions of Mary” in a small town in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“The commission did not make a definitive pronouncement,” he said, but 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.”
As a member of the papal commission, Father Perrella said he could not discuss specifics that had not already been revealed by Pope Francis to the media.
But he did not object to the suggestion that one of the complicating factors was the tension existing at the parish in Medjugorje between the Franciscans assigned there and the local bishop.
In some of the alleged messages, Mary sided with the Franciscans. Continue reading
Sources
- America article by Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
- Image: National Geographic