Former Vatican exorcist Bishop Andrea Gemma has denounced alleged visions of Our Lady in the Bosnian town of Medjugorje as the "work of the devil" and a "diabolical deceit".
The UK Daily Mail reports that the Vatican has rejected claims made by the six Bosnian 'seers' that they have seen the Virgin Mary more than 40,000 times over the past 27 years
Bishop Andrea Gemma, 77, once the Vatican's top exorcist, told a magazine in Italy: "In Medjugorje everything happens in function of money: Pilgrimages, lodging houses, sale of trinkets."This whole sham is the work of the Devil. It is a scandal."
He predicted that the Vatican would soon crack down on the group.
The Medjugorje phenomenon began on June 25, 1981, when six children told a priest they had seen the Virgin on a hillside near their town. Some of the children also claim to have received ten secrets from Our Lady.
A church investigation dismissed the vision, and the Vatican banned pilgrimages to the site in 1985. But many Catholics ignored the ban.
Today, the seers own smart houses with security gates and tennis courts and expensive cars. One is married to a former US beauty queen.
1 comment:
Hi there,
I thought I should send this post to you because the newspaper is going to make a retraction so here you go.
London Tabloid Inaccuartely Portrayed Bishop as Speaking for the
Vatican Against Medjugorje
June 15, 2008 - The "news" has flashed across blogs and chain-mail
lists and even onto at least one Catholic news site:
Medjugorje had been condemned -- proclaimed as evil -- by the Vatican.
That was the subject tag for a flood of e-mails and fodder for chat
rooms around Europe and North America. The headline came from an
English newspaper and said, "Vatican denounces group's claim of seeing
the Virgin Mary more than 40,000 times as 'work of the devil.'"
It was a dream come true for the many enemies of the alleged
apparitions. Finally: the famed apparition site in Bosnia-Hercegovina,
which has been drawing more pilgrims than any apparition since Fatima
-- and perhaps before that (forty million since 1981) -- had been
denounced, ending the debate. Vanquished.
It seemed so cut and dry, with one major hitch: the report -- that it
was a Vatican official -- was erroneous, disseminated in a lurid
London tabloid as a sparsely detailed article that was then picked up
by those bloggers and sites such as CathNews in Australia which long
have hankered to give Medjugorje its comeuppance. The tabloid took it
from a short interview with the bishop in an Italian magazine and
hyped it into a Vatican ruling.
Most major religious news sites stayed away from the story -- knowing
that there had been no such pronouncement from Rome. In fact, a recent
decision by the Vatican to take Medjugorje away from a
negative-leaning national bishops' commission was seen as the most
important positive development for the site since 1986 (when the local
bishop's authority to rule on it was likewise removed when he tried to
reject it).
Still, there were the e-mails -- based on purported and still
unconfirmed statements by Monsignor Andrea Gemma of Italy, a retired
bishop-exorcist who, it was claimed, told an Italian magazine that
Medjugorje is a deception that will soon be ruled against by Rome.
"It is a scandal," he was quoted as saying. According to the
newspaper, the Vatican will "soon crack down on the group [of seers]."
But a Vatican spokesman Bishop Gemma is not -- and never was,
discrediting the headline and the flurry of e-mails quoting the
tabloid, which, in the tradition of British journalism, often designs
headers before it finds facts to support them. First published in 1896
by Lord Northcliffe, it is Britain's second biggest-selling daily
newspaper (after The Sun).
Where its idea originated that this local bishop represented the
Vatican was not readily apparent. According to a Church biography,
Gemma served as the prelate of the Isernia-Venafro diocese from
December 7, 1990 to August 5, 2006 but was never in a ranking position
at the Vatican. To say one of Italy's bishops speaks for the Vatican
(there are 225 dioceses, not to mention all the retired prelates) is
like saying that a federal official in Pittsburgh speaks for the White
House.
In fact, there are no official "Vatican" exorcists. The idea that he
was such apparently came from a popular secular book written by Tracy
Wilkinson about exorcists in Italy and entitled -- in a way that
alluded to the Church as a whole, not the Holy See -- The Vatican's
Exorcists.
Said the book, which featured several exorcists: "Gemma, seventy-four,
speaks at times with a slow, dramatic flair, repeating his words for
emphasis." It added that he was a featured speaker at a meeting of
exorcists "where he regaled the priests with his stories, his
eagerness to knock down the mystique around diabolical possession, and
his penchant for the closest thing to irreverence that a bishop can
muster when talking about Church hierarchy."
Despite the fact that Rome has never said anything negative about
Medjugorje -- remaining neutral, at least for now -- that freewheeling
style fit neatly with The Mail's own penchant for articles that cast a
negative light on the Church. Noted one English viewer (Peter Devine,
of County Durham): "The Daily Mail newspaper is the Catholic Church's
greatest enemy in England."
The Mail was not, however, the original source. "You'll see that soon
the Vatican will intervene with something explosive to unmask once and
for all who is behind this deceit," the now 77-year-old bishop told
Petrus, an online Italian Catholic journal.
If that is ever the case, we will adhere to the verdict. The Gemma
statement went on to say that the Church already has spoken through
the Bishop of Mostar -- whose authority, in fact, has been stripped.
That bishop long has been antagonistic to Medjugorje but his diocese
lost authority over Medjugorje in 1986, rendering the idea that he
speaks for the Church as another inaccuracy expressed in the Petrus
interview by Gemma himself, who also erroneously stated that
pilgrimages are not allowed there (despite official Vatican statements
to the contrary; it has twice stated through its press office that
while official parish pilgrimages are not allowed until there is
Church approval, unofficial ones are allowed, including those with
priests. The Cardinal of Sarajevo, who is the country's highest
ecclesiastic authority, has repeated this).
Might Medjugorje one day be rejected?
While John Paul II was highly favorable toward the apparitions, even
encouraging pilgrimages, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger rescued the
site from local condemnation, it is not clear how Benedict will act
now that he is pontiff. We will adhere to whatever the Vatican
decides. Thus far, it has decided nothing. When such an announcement
comes, it will be through the Vatican press office from the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Meanwhile, another priest highlighted in The Vatican's Exorcists --
the famed Father Gabriele Amorth, of Rome (who performed exorcisms
with John Paul II) -- has visited Medjugorje and described it as both
an authentic apparition and (ironically) a "fortress against Satan."
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