Medjugorje Website Updates

The 17th International Youth Festival - Mladifest 17 – will take place in Medjugorje from August 1st to August 6th, 2006. The theme of the encounter is, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps 119 [118]:105) ( “Dear children … witness with your life that you believe and live the Word of God.” - Message of January 25, 2006

What touches young people most in Medjugorje? What attracts them?

Their longing for peace, their thirst for the truth. The world deceives us so often. The media emphasise mostly negative things. Young people are very much manipulated in the area of sexuality, and attacked in their souls. This can lead to severe consequences if their faith has not been strengthened beforehand. The message of Medjugorje awakens in them a longing for true peace, and probably for God and for the family... for intact families. Many people come from broken families nowadays. It is very rare that one finds a family, where the love of the neighbour is really lived, where there is prayer, where parents do not divorce after the first difficulty. But, in my opinion, what draws them mostly to Medjugorje is their longing for God, and the longing to find a meaning to their lives. Here you can meet Mary and Christ more intensely than at home. Another important factor is that young people meet other young people, whom they perceive to have found peace, and to have immersed more deeply in the spiritual life.

Dragan Soldo: You went on pilgrimage to many other great Marian shrines. Can you say something about the specificity of Medjugorje?

Mons. José Domingo Ulloa: The specificity of Medjugorje is the gift of peace received here. This is what humanity is longing for today, and this gift is received in Medjugorje through our Mother Mary. It is not only about inner peace, but also about discovering that we are all brothers, and that conflicts and violence are not a solution. This peace should be shared with others.

Lidija Paris: You are born in Vukovar, and your father was born in Posusje. So many years after the war, it is noticeable that you still carry a deep inner pain remembering all that has happened. You came here with an envelope containing some photographs and some papers. This is all that remains of the first 40 years of your life…

Mirjana Kovač: I came to be in Medjugorje during these days that are still so painful for me. With faith in God, it is much easier for us to carry our cross. We unite our cross to the cross of Jesus, we offer everything to Him. Jesus allowed us this dignity. Thanks to my father and my mother who educated us in faith in God, and with the Rosary in the hand, during those days that are unimaginable for a human intelligence, we had the impression that we were somehow mysteriously supported. We were conscious that the worst could happen at any moment, but thanks to our faith in God, everything had another dimension. Death was closer to us then life…

Nowhere in the world has Our Lady ever spoken for such a long time and through so many messages to the people of this earth. This fact alone is so unique that it makes us wonder. The Messages have nothing spectacular nor sensational in them, as we journalists expect and as we are used to in news broadcasting. Many Messages are repetitions, deepening of the same content, offering help to make even the smallest step in faith; they are repeated invitations finally to do and to live what Our Lady already invited us to live. She motivates us again and again to turn to her to learn how to believe, to find Jesus, to find ourselves. All this is not particularly interesting for the demands of a journalist. No wonder, because the Messages are not passing news which seem a sensation today and become "cold coffee" tomorrow, according to the proverb: "There is nothing as old as yesterday's newspaper." The Messages are not like that. They are supports and helps to grow continually and in simplicity.