Medjugorje News & Articles

By Michael H. Brown

... I'll go by what the Church ends up formally concluding (it is currently in the hands of a Vatican commission) -- period -- but my personal belief is that this is a place halfway between here and the hereafter, a supernatural spot where the dimensional partition is thin. I had gone through my "conversion" (actually, my return) to the Church years before, as I said (independent of any apparition), but this brought me into a deeper and richer phase of Catholicism. It also spurred my writing in the Catholic realm. Not only did virtually everyone change for the better after visiting, but did so profoundly -- converting others, establishing Adoration in their parishes upon return to the U.S., starting uncountable Rosary groups, and in many cases becoming priests. The seers are human -- and not perfect (is anyone?) -- but the good fruits vastly outweighed any "bad."

by Prof. Marco Corvaglia

The community Caritas of Birmingham (Alabama) has gained much publicity and visibility in the U.S. by hosting many times (162 from 1988 to 2011), year after year, Marija Pavlović's, the Medjugorje visionary, daily apparitions.

So it is particularly interesting and significant to know the doctrines that are observed in the community and are spread by its founder and owner, Terry Colafrancesco.

He published in the mid-nineties, under his usual pseudonym of Friend of Medjugorje, the book How to Change Your Husband [Caritas, Sterrett (AL), 1996], printed by the community itself and now also downloadable from its official website.

Reading the book one is astonished by the male chauvinism, sometimes grotesque, that seems to characterize it: for example, he writes that the devil, in order to hide to people the potentially destructive nature of women, got persons to quit the right habit of giving female names to hurricanes that each year lash the shores of the Atlantic.

Actually, this isn’t simply absurd male chauvinism, but rather adhesion to well-known religious ideologies.

The young Franciscan Peter Kim Dae Woo visited Međugorje for the second time. He comes from the parish Incon in Korea, where he serves as the assistant parish priest. He was ordained in 2009, despite his great desire to become a singer. He studied at the University for electrical engineering, but he dreamt of music, and that had even reduced his student’s performance at the university. “I studied for four years, but I was not interested in that at all. I would spend most of my time playing and singing, the music was my whole life. I was student only up to the moment when I got to know music a bit better. At one point, I was no longer attending classes. Back in those days, I used to have a nick name “factory of curses”, because all of the words that were coming out from my mouth were bad, but I did not care for that at all. I only cared for music and lived in its world completely. I socialised with ‘so-called musicians’”

Caritas of Birmingham - Question from anonymous on 12-23-2010:

Dear Dr. Geraghty, Concerning the upcoming apparition at Caritas of Birmingham with a visionary from Medjudgorje (Marija) March 19 - March 23, 2010, advertised on their website, okay for Roman Catholics to attend? Thank you!

A beautiful, extroverted, lively girl, in love with God. But the beauty of God’s plan for her life becomes shiningly apparent in the last two years of her illness. 18 years of life: a model for people of all ages.

Chiara Luce Badano was born is Sassello, near Savona (Northwest Italy), on October 29, 1971, to parents who had been trying to have a child for 11 years. Her childhood and adolescence were serene: she lived in a loving, united family from which she received a solid Christian education.

Edward and Patricia Locks are now for over 10 years concerned parents of their daughters Erin and Jenny living in Caritas of Birmingham.

Recently someone attempting to defend Caritas of Birmingham and its leader, self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje" (Terry Colafrancesco), posted a letter attributed to Edward and Patricia Locks. This letter was not posted or written by the Locks. The originator of this letter is guilty of fraud.

STANDING tall and broad, occasionally kilted and with the rosiness of cheek sported by those who thrive outdoors, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow wouldn’t look out of place on the front of a packet of porridge oats, swinging a caber.

(RNS) Dirt at an ancient holy site in Chimayo, N.M. reputedly cures a woman’s rare bone cancer.

In North Carolina, a 14-year-old girl stricken with pneumonia is removed from life support but survives after an angelic image appears on a security monitor outside her hospital room.

A Texas man lives despite being cut in half after being run over by a train.

Were these acts of God, or is there a scientific explanation for events that seem to defy reason?

For an hour every Wednesday night (10 p.m. EST), that divisive question is the focus of “Miracle Detectives,” one of prime-time television’s first forays into exploring the miraculous.

By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When the bishop of Green Bay, Wis., recently recognized a series of Marian apparitions from 1859, it marked the first time apparitions in the United States received official approval.

That's quite an achievement considering that more than 1,500 visions of Mary have been reported around the world, but in the past century only nine cases have received official church approval as being "worthy of belief," said an expert in Marian apparitions.

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed” (Jn 20, 29)

Christianne Claessens – the first witness of healing of woman from Switzerland Joelle Beuret – Devanthery in Medjugorje, in October 2010, as she describes the pilgrimage and all of the events.