Bishop against rook

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 20

Bishop against rook

The tiny Roman Catholic parish of Medjugorje (Between the Mountains), in a poor and remote part of central Yugoslavia, has become the centre of a fierce religious controversy. It revolves round the claims of six local children to have seen apparitions of the Virgin Mary. The visions, which, they say, began in June, 1981, and continue to this day, have attracted wide publicity and a constant stream of visitors from as far away as America. The Catholic church, which reserves the right to pronounce on whether reports of visions by its faithful are genuine or not, has yet to pass judgement. But while the higher-ups scratch their mitres, in Medjugorje the row among churchmen is turning nasty. The Bishop of Mostar, Monsignor Pavao Zanic, in whose diocese

Medjugorje lies, says he is morally certain that the reported visions of the Virgin Mary are no more than a “collective hallucination” stimulated by a group of local Franciscan monks.

Neither side is wholly neutral in this affair. The Franciscans have had a long and bitter dispute with Bishop Zanic over the control of parishes which they have held since the days of Turkish rule in the Balkans and which the Church government in Rome now wants them to hand over to the diocesan clergy.

Two of the Franciscans have been dismissed from their order for disobedience to higher authority. But they are refusing to give in. Their opponent, Bishop Zanic, seems to have been suggesting that they have resorted to faking mira-

cles in Medjugorje to strengthen their hand.

Not so, said the Archbishop of Split, Monsignor Frane Franic, in a recent interview in a Catholic paper in Zagreb. According to him, the supposed visions in Medjugorje could not be the work of the devil, which he seems to think the Fran-ciscan-manipulation theory implies. For the time being, the other bishops are, perhaps wisely, keeping their own counsel.

Yugoslavia’s communist Government is delighted by the fuss among the Catholics. All the same, with its eye on badly-needed hardcurrency earnings, it does not object to the influx of foreign visitors, although the local authorities are not spending money on amenities at the pilgrimage site. Copyright — The Economist.