The Catholic Church has an extended and controversial history of the faithful claiming to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, of statues that purportedly wept blood tears and stigmata that erupted on hands mimicking the injuries of Christ.
On Friday, the Vatican will announce recent norms to assist determine whether and when these seemingly supernatural events are authentic. It’s stepping in amid a boom in claims and concern that apocalyptic prophesies are spreading online faster than ever before, causing confusion among the many faithful.
When confirmed as authentic by church authorities, these otherwise inexplicable divine signs can result in a flourishing of the religion, with recent religious vocations and conversions. That has been the case for the purported apparitions of Mary that turned Fatima, Portugal and Lourdes, France into enormously popular pilgrimage destinations.
Church figures who claimed to have experienced the stigmata wounds, including Padre Pio and Pope Francis’ namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, have inspired tens of millions of Catholics. A plaster statue of the Madonna that purportedly wept blood within the garden of a family within the Italian city of Civitavecchia counted St. John Paul II as a devotee, regardless that the event was never officially confirmed as authentic.
But the phenomena also can develop into a source of scandal. That was the case when the Vatican in 2007 excommunicated the members of a Quebec-based group, the Army of Mary, after its foundress claimed to have had Marian visions and declared herself the reincarnation of the mother of Christ.
Francis himself has weighed in on the phenomenon, making clear that he’s dedicated to the major church-approved Marian apparitions, reminiscent of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who believers say appeared to an Indigenous man in Mexico in 1531, and Our Lady of Fatima, who believers say appeared to a few illiterate shepherd children in 1917.
But Francis has expressed skepticism about newer events, including claims of repeated messages from Mary to “seers” on the shrine of Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, even while allowing pilgrimages to happen there.
“I prefer the Madonna as mother, our mother, and never a lady who’s the top of a telegraphic office, who sends a message day by day at a certain time,” Francis told reporters in 2017.
On Friday, the Vatican’s doctrinal office will issue a revised set of norms for discerning apparitions “and other supernatural phenomena,” updating a set of guidelines first issued in 1978.
Those guidelines largely left it within the hands of the local bishop to research purported visions or supernatural events to find out in the event that they were worthy of belief among the many faithful, and tended to err on the side of caution.
“I say we’ve got to consider in these apparitions that they’re possible, but we also should have a sort of healthy skepticism,” said Robert Fastiggi, who teaches Marian theology on the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan and is an authority on apparitions.
He noted that the 1978 norms identified loads of reasons for proceeding fastidiously, reminiscent of whether the purported message received through the apparition contradicted the religion or whether the person claiming it had an economic interest in drawing believers in.
The general rule of thumb, Fastiggi said in an interview, is to follow the biblical advice: “Test all the things, retain what is sweet.”
The Vatican has generally shunned intervening, leaving it within the hands of local bishops and offering its approval to fewer than 20 reported apparitions over several centuries, in accordance with Michael O’Neill, who runs the web apparition resource The Miracle Hunter.
Last 12 months nonetheless, it announced the creation of a special commission, or observatory, inside the Pontifical International Marian Academy to check the phenomenon and supply consulting services to bishops.
The commission is made up of a scientific committee of experts, including Fastiggi, from a wide range of disciplines. Its director, Sister Daniela Del Gaudio, will join the Vatican’s doctrine czar in announcing the brand new norms at a news conference Friday.
The observatory’s mission statement says experts will analyze and interpret apparitions, lacrimations, or weeping statues, stigmata “and other mystical phenomena which can be in progress or have already occurred, but are still awaiting a pronouncement of the ecclesiastical authority on their authenticity.”
“It is significant to supply clarity, because often alleged messages generate confusion, spread anxious apocalyptic scenarios and even accusations against the pope and the church,” said the academy head, the Rev. Stefano Cecchin.
There has been no shortage of controversy surrounding reported apparitions or other supernatural phenomena.
In 1951, for instance, Pope Pius XII confirmed a choice by the then-Holy Office that purported visions of the Madonna at a Carmelite convent in Lipa, Philippines, which were said to have been accompanied by a shower of rose petals, had “no sign of supernatural character or origin.”
The Vatican got here to that call after the convent prioress confessed to having participated within the “deception” at Lipa, and a few of her nuns testified that they’d seen deliveries of roses to the convent and had received orders from the prioress to burn the petal-less stems.
But for a long time, Filipino bishops glossed over the definitive nature of the Vatican ruling, suggesting of their communications to the faithful that the jury was still out on whether the apparitions were authentic or not, in accordance with documentation made public last 12 months by the Filipino bishops conference.
As a result, some Filipino faithful have continued to venerate the image of the Madonna at Lipa, prompting the Vatican in a series of increasingly exasperated decrees to demand that the Lipa archbishop heed the unique 1951 ruling and put an end to the devotional events.
The latest decree, from July of last 12 months, demanded the Lipa archbishop cancel plans to commemorate the seventy fifth anniversary of the purported apparitions, saying “it could not be advisable so that you can authorize the aforementioned celebration under any form.”
