Vatican-watcher Gianluca Barile says that CDF has held a meeting and reached conclusions about the Medjugorje case, to be presented to Pope Francis. How reliable this is: we don’t know yet. (The translation is mine.)
Medjugorje: the Vatican rejects the apparitions and isolates the seers
by Gianluca Barile
http://www.gianlucabarile.it/?p=518
The only concession, for Medjugorje, recognized as a place of prayer, is because God knows how to reap where he does not sow, explained the Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, during the Plenary of the Congregation which met yesterday to express itself on the alleged apparitions of our Lady to the six “seers” of this little locality in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who say they have received messages periodically from the “Gospa” for 34 years in a row. As for the remainder, the judgment of the former Holy Office, which expressed itself on the basis of the final report of the “Ruini Commission”, established by Benedict XVI to shed light precisely on this phenomenon, was absolutely negative. For the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, indeed the “apparitions” do not consist of anything supernatural, so the faithful have been forbidden to take part in the “ecstasies” of the six “seers” and the latter have been prohibited to disclose the texts of the messages which they might receive from our Lady. Another NO regards the parish of Medjugorje, under the title of St. James, which will not become a Marian shrine, as the six “seers” themselves apparently had wished. But that’s not all: Bishops may not welcome the “seers” into their dioceses for public meetings and testimonies, as has happened up to today, but are limited to providing accompaniment, by a priest, for pilgrims who travel to Medjugorje. Pilgrims themselves who go to Medjugorje, will not be permitted to recognize, by their presence, the authenticity of the apparitions and are to avoid any contact with the “seers”, concentrating only on prayer and approaching the Sacraments. But why so much severity on the Vatican’s part? First of all, due to the theological inconsistency of the messages, then because of the economic interest of the “seers” who have invested in inns and travel agencies, and hence due to the rivalry which has divided some of them, and for the disobedience shown both toward the bishop of Mostar, their Diocese, and toward the Pope who, by means of the “Ruini Commission”, ordered them in vain to present the ten secrets which they allegedly received from the “Gospa”. One of the key aspects which impelled the Vatican to use the iron fist, is precisely that of money: true seers have never been seen making money from their own apparitions. On this point, it’s only right to ask: do the six “seers” of Medjugorje maintain that they see and speak with our Lady because the alleged apparitions are real, or only to attract a greater number of pilgrims to travel with their agencies and make reservations in their inns? The last word is waiting for Pope Francis, who will shortly issue an appropriate decree, but it is hard to think that the Pontiff could change the conclusions of CDF, especially because he himself, several times, has shown, more or less evidently, his own scepticism about the goodness of what is happening at Medjugorje. So things are headed toward a noisy signal of black smoke.
