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Until recent history, very little was known about the small Catholic Parish village of Medjugorje, today part of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, it was here, in 1981, that the rural Bosnian village of Medjugorje would gain supreme religious importance on the grandest of scales.
On Sunday, June 24, 1981, six teenagers—Ivanka, Vicka, Jakov, Ivan, Marija, and Mirjana—were out walking on a hillside just outside the village, when the six of them encountered the Blessed Virgin. Appearing before them, they have since described the vision as a beautiful young woman, approximately 25 years in age, with dark hair and blue eyes. Dressed in gray and white, and wearing a white veil, they noticed her feet in a froth of clouds, the lady seemingly hovering with a distinctive arc of stars above her head. Interestingly, when the six teenagers asked the woman before them who she was, she replied, “I am the Blessed Virgin Mary.” This day would mark the first of many apparitions, still in continuance today, for the six teenagers.
Appearing daily to the teenagers, sometimes individually and sometimes as a group, the Blessed Virgin continued her directives to pray, fast, confess, study the word of God, and center one's life around the Eucharist. In one of her first messages, the women confirmed, “I have come to tell the world that God exists. He is the fullness of life, and to enjoy this fullness and peace, you must return to God.” The six also reported experiencing an overwhelming, trance-like euphoria each time the vision appeared—trances which usually lasted as long as 40 minutes.
Today, all six of the now-grown teenagers still experience daily apparitions, although two of the women, now married with children, have less frequent visitations than the others. The visions take place on a regular schedule, virtually every evening in the Apparition Room in the parish rectory near the new village Church of St. James. During each appearance, the Blessed Virgin's message is received by one or more of the visionaries, then translated into several different languages and relayed to the attending crowds.
Though the 1981 Apparitions at Medjugorje* have yet to be authenticated by the Vatican, on August 15, 1993, at the former Yugoslavia bishops' conference in Zadar, the committee of bishops declared: “We bishops, after a three-year-long commission study accept Medjugorje as a holy place, as a shrine.” As of today, more than 20 million pilgrims from all corners of the globe have traveled to Medjugorje to worship before its shrine. As could be anticipated in a contemporary age, mass-media outfits have continued to fall upon this small Bosnian village to document and film the alleged supernatural occurrences. Like both Lourdes and Fatima, Medjugorje has attracted vast numbers of the medical community and the infirmed. At present, nearly 400 miraculous healings have been reported.
*The 1981 Apparitions at Medjugorje are currently being investigated by the Holy See. The Church neither approves nor disapproves the alleged apparitions. Once the investigation has been completed, Classic Pilgrimages will comply with the Church's findings.
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