Journey to Medjugorje
by Matushka Katherine Swanson
The appearance, continuously for several years now, of the
Virgin Mary to a number of young children in a small village in Croatia has been the
source of both enthusiasm and controversy in the Roman Catholic world. Encouraged by the
local Franciscan clergy, tens of thousands of pilgrims have visited Medjugorje to hear the
messages conveyed to the children when the Virgin allegedly appears before them. These
messages consist of statements of a general kind about religion, but with a decidedly
ecumenical flavor, of late [see, in this regard, paragraph seven, below]. There are also
widely reported miraculous healings associated with the apparition. In spite of local
church support and the sustained popularity of such pilgrimages, however, the happenings
in Medjugorje have met with disapproval from the Croatian Roman Catholic hierarchy and
from the Vatican. They have also transformed a small village into a flourishing tourist
attraction, replete with all of the tacky trappings that go along with such places and the
windfall profits they provide.
In 1986, I had the opportunity to visit this Roman
Catholic place of pilgrimage. My employer at the time, an investor and developer and a
Roman Catholic, had asked me to accompany his wife, a devout woman, to Medjugorje and to
report back to him on what I saw. My husband, an Orthodox Priest and a psychologist who
works as an administrator at a local Jesuit university, was apprehensive, at first, about
my making such a trip, since he is by training sceptical about popular religious phenomena
and, on account of his association with a Roman Catholic institution, is fully aware of
the attitude of Rome towards the apparitions at Medjugorje. As a traditionalist and
conservative Orthodox clergyman, he also questioned the prudence of an Orthodox Christian
visiting this kind of place, especially given its increasing fame as an "ecumenical
center."
However, on hearing of my desire to conduct an objective
investigation, but with no intention of compromising my own Faith in any way whatsoever,
Father and I eventually decided, together, that my trip could prove useful, in terms of
informing other Orthodox Christians about the realities of Medjugorje. (This village,
incidentally, is a short distance from the Jagodnjaca Pit, where more than a thousand Orthodox Christians were slaughtered and buried
in World War II by the Croatian Ustashi, a brutal Nazi rgime supported and aided by
the Croatian Franciscans. In Medjugorje itself, twenty Serbian Orthodox Priests were
publicly tortured, castrated, and buried alive. For reports of these events, see the book The
Suppressed Serbian Voice [Los Angeles, CA: SAVA, 1994], 2nd ed., s.v.
"Medjugorje," as well as "The Madonna of Medjugorje," a
Westernhanger/BBC video tape presentation, produced by Angela Tilby and available from
WTVS, Detroit [1-800-441-3000].) Hence, as though to prove our thinking correct, my
present report for Orthodox Tradition and its readers.
Our trip to Croatia was organized by a Roman Catholic tour
group and we were guided by a Roman Catholic priest. When we arrived in Zagreb, I visited
a local Orthodox parish (a very beautiful Church), after which we were joined by a tourist
guide, a woman who happened to be Orthodox and who bluntly indicated that she considered
the apparitions at Medjugorje to be a hoax. When we finally reached Medjugorje by bus, we
were placed in local homes, households which had obviously benefited materially from the
tourist trade generated by the apparitions. Though the village was filled with admittedly
pious, if desperate, pilgrims, many obviously ill and seeking cures for every sort of
disease, the locals were nonchalant about the religious aspects of their newfound fame.
The woman with whom we were placed, much like our Orthodox tourist guide, dismissed the
whole phenomenon with what was essentially a verbal shrug.
The appearance of the Virgin—at present to two young
children, four other children ("seers") having gone off to college—occurs
in the so-called "Apparition Room," inside a large church rectory into which
only select individuals are admitted (see photograph at left). Through a series of
interesting events that I will not recount here, I was mistaken, while standing with the
huge crowd gathered outside the rectory, for a member of the London press. Neither
assenting to nor disagreeing with this misidentification, I was quickly shuffled up to the
front of the crowd and into the door of the Apparition Room, while my employer’s
wife, who had come to Medjugorje as a pilgrim, ironically enough, was left standing with
the rest of the people. And so it was that I saw the Medjugorje apparition first-hand,
something which most pilgrims, after travelling, in some cases, halfway around the world,
never get to see.
What, then, did I experience? Let me begin by saying that
the Franciscans who operate the Medjugorje complex are, almost to a number, exceedingly
officious, rude, and even nasty. In fact, as I entered the Apparition Room, a brutish
Franciscan, "elbowing" his way in, grabbed me by the collar and simply pushed me
aside. My strong protest was met with indifference. This nastiness was complemented by the
cold, chilling atmosphere of the hall, which gives little evidence of being a religious
shrine. At any rate, as I stood at the back of the room, two young people walked in,
knelt, Crossed themselves in Latin style, and then stood and stared at the front wall.
After a short time, one related the Virgin’s message for the day. Such was the
Medjugorje miracle. I saw nothing. I can only attest to the total lack of a spiritual
atmosphere in the Apparition Room and to the cold chill that prevailed in it. Nor did I,
when outside the building, witness anything like a "dancing sun," another
phenomenon reported by pilgrims to Medjugorje. Rather, I am aware of the case of one young
man who, looking too long at the sun for this supposed miracle, seriously impaired his
vision.
I should add that, after leaving the rectory, our guide
took our group for an audience with the "seers." During this audience, a pilgrim
asked one of children the following question: "Does the Virgin say that the Catholic
Church is the true church?" The response given by the child (Marija, pictured at
right) provides clear evidence of the ecumenical content and religious relativism which,
oddly enough, increasingly mark the "revelations" at Medjugorje: "Our
Blessed Mother says that all religions are equally pleasing to God."
My brief report, here, is not meant to ridicule those
sincere Roman Catholic believers who flock to Croatia looking for a miracle, whether to
restore their faith or their health. The wrong beliefs of Roman Catholic Christianity are
not things in which we Orthodox exult; rather, we deeply grieve for the pious, sincere
believers in that church, believers who have been separated from the Grace-filled life of
Orthodoxy, in which the miraculous is not a cause of faith and restoration, but a product
of these things. Nor do I wish to say that the chilling cold of Medjugorje is a sign of
the "demonic," as that word is so often misused. People do not flock there to do
or to worship evil. They are seeking God. But in this place, their zeal and faith are met
by what is unreal—whether the unreality of delusion or a fantasy contrived by the
lovers of cash and profit, I cannot firmly say—, which is a devilish, if lamentable,
circumstance indeed.
Matushka Katherine is an Orthodox Christian of
Albanian descent. Her husband, the Reverend Dr. Martin Swanson, is Pastor of the St. Basil
the Great Orthodox Church in St. Louis, MO, a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church
Abroad. This article originally appeared in Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XIII, Nos.
3&4, pp. 51-53.
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