From the Radford Files archives:

In March, the Vatican began an investigation into miracles and appearances of the Virgin Mary at the famous Medjugorje shrine in Bosnia. According to an Associated Press report, “An international commission of inquiry headed by Italian Cardinal Camillo Ruini — a top adviser to the late Pope John Paul II — has been formed to study the case and report back to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican said in a statement.”

The “Miracles of Medjugorje” date back to 1981, when six teenagers claimed they saw a vision of the Virgin Mary on a hill near their village (then part of Yugoslavia). As sunset approached, they claimed, they saw a veiled woman appear in the sky, surrounded by a blinding white light. The woman carried an infant in her arms and did not speak but instead gestured for them to come closer. The teens ran back to their village, but no one else saw the incident.

The curious vision reappeared to the same group the following day, though this time she spoke, telling them what they all assumed: “I am the Blessed Virgin Mary.” After that, the same floating woman, child, and bright light appeared nearly every day for the next decade—each time only visible to the original group. The location changed often, and sometimes the Virgin Mary would tell the teens messages which they would then relay to local church authorities (and later to the huge crowds of devout followers gathered nearby).

So how would the Vatican go about investigating this miracle? The same way it investigates anything else: interviewing eyewitness, possibly doing tests, looking for physical evidence, and so on. Joe Nickell, in his book Looking For a Miracle, notes that the local Bishop, Pavao Zanic, at first embraced the Marian visions but soon grew to doubt the teens’ story after he began investigating. “Zanic found grounds for doubting the authenticity of the apparitions, including numerous contradictions in the children’s stories.” In fact, at the conclusion of his investigation, Bishop Zanic stated quite unequivocally, “The phenomenon at Medjugorje will be the greatest shame of the Church in the twentieth century. Once can say that these are hallucinations, illusions, hypnosis or lies.”

Perhaps due in part to Bishop Zanic’s earlier miracle investigation, the Vatican has yet to validate the Marian apparition or call the sightings a miracle. Still, more than 30 million people have visited the area in the past three decades despite its lack of official status—even as a shrine. Perhaps because of the continuing popularity of the site, the Vatican decided it was time to take another look at the “Miracles of Medjugorje.”

This piece originally appeared in the Briefs Briefs column in the June 2010 Skeptical Briefs newsletter.

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