The Vatican will announce today new rules for authenticating miracles and seemingly supernatural events that Catholics have long insisted they have witnessed amid a social media-fueled surge in suspicious stories.
The Catholic Church has a long and controversial history of worshipers claiming to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, of statues supposedly crying tears of blood and stigmata bursting from their hands imitating Christ’s wounds.
When confirmed as authentic by ecclesiastical authorities, these otherwise inexplicable divine signs can lead to a flowering of faith, with new religious vocations and conversions.
But now the Church is intervening amid a surge in claims and concerns that apocalyptic prophecies are spreading online faster than ever, causing confusion among the faithful.
Pope Francis leads his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, May 15, 2024
The Catholic Church has a long and controversial history of worshipers claiming to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, of statues supposedly crying tears of blood and stigmata bursting from their hands imitating Christ’s wounds.
The body of Padre Pio is displayed for veneration by the faithful in a partially glass coffin in the crypt of the ancient Church of Saint Mary of Grace in San Giovanni Rotondo in the Apulia region of southern Italy, on 24 April 2008. The Italian saint is a cult figure for millions of people around the world, as many Christians believe he had permanent sores on his hands similar to the stigmata or wounds from the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Pope Francis in his popemobile leaves at the end of a mass where he canonized Pastors Jacinta and Francisco Marto at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima, on Saturday, May 13, 2017, in Fátima, Portugal.
There are numerous examples of such inexplicable phenomena that have awakened new faith and encouraged believers to worship in new sacred places.
For example, Mary’s supposed apparitions have made Fátima, Portugal and Lourdes, France, hugely popular pilgrimage destinations.
Church figures who claimed to have experienced the wounds of the stigmata, including Padre Pio and Pope Francis’ namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, have inspired millions of Catholics.
And a plaster statue of the Virgin who supposedly wept blood in a family’s garden in the Italian town of Civitavecchia counted St. John Paul II as a devotee, although the event was never officially confirmed as authentic.
But phenomena can also become a cause for scandal.
That was the case when the Vatican excommunicated members of a Quebec-based group, the Army of Mary, in 2007 after its founder 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 it clear that he is devoted to the major Marian apparitions approved by the church, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe, who believers say appeared to an indigenous man in Mexico in 1531, and Our Lady of Fatima. , who, according to believers, appeared to three illiterate shepherd children in 1917.
But Francis has expressed skepticism about more recent developments, including claims of repeated messages from Mary to ‘seers’ at the Medjugorje shrine in Bosnia-Herzegovina, even as he allowed pilgrimages to take place there.
“I prefer the Virgin as a mother, our mother, and not a woman who is the head of a telegraph office, who sends a message every 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 published in 1978.
Those guidelines largely left it to the local bishop to investigate alleged visions or supernatural events to determine whether they were worthy of faith among the faithful, and tended to err on the side of caution.
Pope Francis greets the faithful during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, May 15, 2024.
La Verna, Tuscany, Italy: statue of Saint Francis made by Giovanni Collina Graziani (1820-1893). This statue is placed in the Chapel of the Church of the Stigmata within the sanctuary of La Verna.
‘The Weeping Virgin’ has skeptics, believers and the curious flocking to El Canal in Colima, Mexico, to witness what some residents believe is a miracle.
“I say we have to believe that these apparitions are possible, but we also have to have a healthy kind of skepticism,” said Robert Fastiggi, who teaches Marian theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan, and is an expert on appearances.
He noted that the 1978 regulations identified many reasons to proceed with caution, such as whether the alleged message received during the apparition contradicted the faith or whether the person claiming it had a financial interest in attracting believers.
The general rule, Fastiggi said in an interview, is to follow the biblical advice: “Try everything, hold on to what is good.”
The Vatican has generally refrained from intervening, leaving it up to local bishops and offering approval to fewer than 20 reported apparitions over several centuries, according to Michael O’Neill, who runs the online apparition resource The Miracle Hunter.
However, last year he announced the creation of a special commission, or observatory, within the Pontifical International Marian Academy to study the phenomenon and provide consulting services to bishops.
The commission is made up of a scientific committee of experts, including Fastiggi, from various disciplines. Its director, Sister Daniela Del Gaudio, will join the Vatican’s doctrine czar in announcing the new rules at a news conference on Friday.
The observatory’s mission says that experts will analyze and interpret apparitions, teardrops or weeping statues, stigmata “and other mystical phenomena that are ongoing or have already occurred, but are still awaiting a pronouncement from ecclesiastical authority on their authenticity.”
“It is important to provide clarity, because often supposed messages generate confusion, spread alarming apocalyptic scenarios or even accusations against the Pope and the Church,” said the director of the Academy, the Reverend Stefano Cecchin.
Pope Francis holds his cap as he boards the Popemobile on the day of the weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, May 15, 2024.
Madonna of Trevignano, Italy, who appears to cry blood
There has been no shortage of controversy surrounding reported apparitions or other supernatural phenomena.
In 1951, for example, Pope Pius had no effect.” sign of supernatural character or origin.’
The Vatican made that decision after the convent’s prioress confessed to having participated in Lipa’s “hoax,” and some of its nuns testified that they had seen deliveries of roses to the convent and had received orders from the prioress to burn the petal. fewer stems.
But for decades, Philippine bishops overlooked the final nature of the Vatican ruling, suggesting in their communications to the faithful that it had not yet been decided whether the apparitions were authentic or not, according to documentation made public last year by the conference of Filipino bishops. .
As a result, some Filipino faithful have continued to venerate the image of the Virgin of Lipa, prompting the Vatican to issue a series of increasingly exasperated decrees demanding that the archbishop of Lipa heed the original 1951 ruling and put an end to it. to devotional events.
The latest decree, from July last year, required the archbishop of Lipa to cancel plans to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the alleged apparitions, saying that “it would not be advisable for you to authorize the aforementioned celebration in any form.”