PILGRIMS ARE flocking to Medjugorje to mark 30 years since a group of local teenagers claimed to have first seen a vision of the Virgin Mary, an event that has drawn tens of millions of people to this remote village in southern Bosnia.
Visitors from around the world will rise at dawn and climb the rocky Krizevac – or Cross Hill – to where Our Lady is said to have appeared, to start a day of commemorative events that many hope will aid Medjugorje’s bid for Vatican recognition as a site of special significance.
A Vatican commission led by influential Italian cardinal Camillo Ruini last year opened an inquiry into the authenticity of the apparitions. Some of the self-declared visionaries say that Mary still visits them every day and gives them messages to pass on to the world.
Disputes over the authenticity of the visions has caused sometimes bitter disputes between local clergymen and prompted warnings from the Vatican, but advocates were heartened when Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a close ally of Pope Benedict, made a private visit to Medjugorje in late 2009.
The village, which has grown at an extraordinary rate in recent years and is replete with hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops, was yesterday thronged with pilgrims who braved 35-degree heat to scale the steep and rugged hill and offer prayers to Our Lady.
“It was a long journey to get here but with prayer anything is possible,” said Tadas Bertulis (30), who endured a three-day bus ride from Lithuania to reach this once-obscure corner of Bosnia.
“Mary was with us on the road and She is with us here. I have no words to describe the feeling of being here,” he said, adding that a group of fellow Lithuanians were now walking from their Baltic homeland to Medjugorje and hoped to arrive in September.
Eileen O’Connor from Co Galway was on a “holy holiday” with relatives. “I have been to Medjugorje 20 times in 10 years. The first time, I came to Our Lady with a huge cross on my shoulder and it was lifted. So I have been saying thank you for that. There are so many people here – there seem to be many more than than usual. But it is peaceful and there is always so much joy here.”