VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Friday radically overhauled its process for evaluating alleged visions of the Virgin Mary, weeping statues and other seemingly supernatural phenomena, insisting on having the final say on whether the events are worthy of popular devotion.
The Vatican’s doctrinal office reviewed the norms first issued in 1978, arguing that they were no longer useful or viable in the Internet age. Nowadays, rumors about apparitions or weeping virgins travel fast and can actually harm the faithful if scammers try to make money off of people’s beliefs or manipulate them, the Vatican said.
The new rules rethink the Catholic Church’s evaluation process, essentially ruling out whether church authorities will declare a particular vision, stigmata or other apparently divinely inspired event supernatural.
Instead, the new criteria foresee six main outcomes, the most favorable being that the church issues an evasive doctrinal green light, the so-called “nihil obstat.” Such a statement means that there is nothing in the event that is contrary to the faith and therefore Catholics can express devotion to it.
The revised norms allow that an event can at some point be declared “supernatural” and that the Pope can intervene in the process. But “as a general rule,” the church is no longer in the business of authenticating inexplicable events or making definitive decisions about their supernatural origin.
The Catholic Church has had a long and controversial history of worshipers claiming to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, of statues supposedly crying tears of blood and stigmata erupting on hands and feet imitating Christ’s wounds.
When confirmed as authentic by ecclesiastical authorities, these otherwise inexplicable divine signs have led to a flowering of faith, with new religious vocations and conversions. That has been the case with the supposed apparitions of Mary that turned Fátima, Portugal and Lourdes, France, into hugely popular pilgrimage destinations.
Church figures who claimed to have experienced the wounds of the stigmata, including Padre Pio and Pope Francis’ namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, have inspired millions of Catholics even if decisions about their authenticity have been elusive.
Francis himself has intervened in the phenomenon, making it clear that he is devoted to the main Marian apparitions approved by the Church, such as that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who according to believers appeared to an indigenous person in Mexico in 1531.
But Francis has expressed skepticism about more recent developments, including claims of repeated messages from Mary to “seers” at the Medjugorje shrine in Bosnia-Herzegovina, even as he allowed pilgrimages to take place there.
“I prefer the Virgin as a mother, our mother, and not a woman who is the head of a telegraph office, who sends a message every day at a certain time,” Francis told reporters in 2017.
But the phenomenon has also been the cause of scandal. That was the case when the Vatican excommunicated members of a Quebec-based group, the Army of Mary, in 2007 after its founder claimed to have had Marian visions and declared herself the reincarnation of the mother of Christ.
The revised rules recognize the potential for such abuses and warn that fraudsters will be held accountable, including with canonical sanctions. The new rules warn that claiming mystical experiences for profit or as a means to control or abuse others “must be considered of particular moral gravity.”
The new rules provide for a more articulated investigation process after a bishop receives news of a possible supernatural event in his diocese. He forms a study commission of theologians and canonical lawyers to gather information and evidence, interview alleged witnesses, and come up with a recommendation that he presents to the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for approval.
You can choose from six general outcomes: the green light “nihil obstat” to allow and even encourage popular devotion, or gradually more cautious approaches if there are doctrinal red flags about the reported event. The most serious provides for a declaration that the event is not supernatural or that there are sufficient warning signs to justify a public declaration “that adherence to this phenomenon is not permitted.”
Whereas in the past the bishop usually had the final say unless help was requested from the Vatican, now the Vatican must approve every recommendation proposed by a bishop.
In an explanatory note, the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, acknowledged that the previous way the Vatican handled reported apparitions often led to “considerable confusion” among the faithful.
That confusion has been laid bare even in recent times in connection with alleged visions of the Virgin in a Carmelite convent in Lipa, Philippines, which were said to be accompanied by a shower of rose petals.
In 1951, Pope Pius XII confirmed a decision by the then Holy Office that the alleged visions had “no sign of supernatural character or origin.”
The Vatican made that decision after the convent’s prioress confessed to having participated in Lipa’s “hoax,” and some of its nuns testified that they had seen deliveries of roses to the convent and had received orders from the prioress to burn the petal. fewer stems.
But for decades, Philippine bishops overlooked the final nature of the Vatican ruling after the Vatican urged them to keep their role in the assessment secret. Thus, the bishops suggested in their communications to the faithful that the jury had not yet decided, according to documentation made public last year by the Philippine bishops’ conference.
As a result, some Filipino faithful continued to venerate the image of the Virgin in Lipa, prompting the Vatican to issue a series of increasingly exasperated decrees demanding that the archbishop of Lipa heed the original 1951 ruling and put an end to devotional events.
The latest decree, from July last year, required the archbishop of Lipa to cancel plans to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the alleged apparitions, saying that “it would not be advisable for you to authorize the aforementioned celebration in any form.”
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