The Medjugorje Apparitions (1981) and the Vatican's Ruini Commission

Medjugorje is a village in Čitluk municipality, Herzegovina. In 1981 it lay in communist Yugoslavia. Above it rises Crnica hill. One of its slopes, Podbrdo, is now known as Apparition Hill.

24 June 1981. About 6 pm, Ivanka Ivanković, 15, and Mirjana Dragičević, 16, were walking near the village. Ivanka saw the shimmering silhouette of a woman bathed in a brilliant light on the hill. Others joined them, among them Vicka Ivanković and Ivan Dragičević. The woman held a little child in her arms, said nothing and gestured for them to come closer, but they were afraid to come near.

The next day there was a flash of light as Marija Pavlović and Jakov Čolo, about 10, joined the others. The woman was back, smiling and joyful, and the six went up to her. She stood on a small cloud a little more than a yard off the ground, with a white veil, blue eyes, a crown with twelve stars and her feet unseen. On the third day a light flashed three times. She gave her name: "I am the Blessed Virgin Mary."

By noon on 28 June about 15,000 people had gathered. On 30 June the children were driven away from the village. At the usual hour they asked to be let out of the car. They said she drew near from the direction of Podbrdo, over a kilometre away.

Then the crowds reported wonders of their own. In August 1981 the pastor and many villagers said the word MIR, "peace", was written in the sky over Križevac. On 28 October several hundred people saw a fire at the site of the first apparition. It burned without consuming anything. Pilgrims still describe the sun spinning and changing colour around the hour of the daily apparition.

Yugoslav officials called it a "clerical-nationalist" conspiracy. Police took the children to Mostar for a medical examination, and they were declared healthy. The parish priest, Fr Jozo Zovko, taped the first-week interviews. He was arrested in August 1981 and sentenced over a sermon about "false teachers."

Bishop Pavao Žanić of Mostar-Duvno came to claim "moral certitude that the Medjugorje events are a case of collective hallucination." A diocesan commission in 1986 found supernatural origin not established. The Zadar Declaration of 1991 said "it cannot be affirmed that one is dealing with supernatural apparitions and revelations." In 2010 Benedict XVI set up the Ruini Commission under Cardinal Camillo Ruini, whose report leaked in 2017. On the first seven apparitions it voted 13 in favour of a supernatural character, 1 against, 1 suspended; the six, it found, "were psychically normal and were caught by surprise"; the later phenomena drew many doubts.

In 1984 a French team with Henri Joyeux recorded brain waves and eye movements during the ecstasies and called them "scientifically inexplicable." Critics say such tests reveal little. Joe Nickell noted conflicting stories about what the girls were doing at the first sighting and called the messages "embarrassingly illiterate."

Scott Alexander of Astral Codex Ten traced the sun reports to thin cloud, afterimages, eye movements and expectation. Pope Francis said in 2017 that he was "more suspicious" of the later apparitions. "This is not the Mother of Jesus."

19 September 2024. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith granted a nihil obstat, citing abundant spiritual fruits. It stressed that "this does not imply a declaration of the supernatural character." Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández spoke of "a river of goodness amid human imperfections." Three of the six, Vicka, Ivan and Marija, are said to still see her every day at about 6:40 pm.