The Deacon's Bench
From Diane Korzeniewski at Te Deum Laudemus!:
A pro-Medjugorje website in Brazil is reporting that Pope Francis, while in Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day, made some rather blunt comments concerning Medjugorje, and about activities of the alleged visionaries. The title of the post says a lot: “Pope Francis says those who say they see Our Lady have psychological problems and that the seers of Medjugorje lie to the people.”
Now, we are at the mercy of the website which is supplying this information and I’m merely passing along what they report.
The website discusses information revealed in a book by Father Alexander Awi Mello, who interviewed the Holy Father during his trip to Brazil. The book, “She’s my Mother: Encounters of Pope Francis with Mary” is published by Edições Loyola. I’m told it is in several languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and German (sorry, I don’t have all of the links). From what I understand, Father Mello inquired about having it translated into English, but for whatever reason, the publisher has not done this.Medjugorje is discussed on pages 235 and 236 in the Portuguese edition, but we get just a few excerpts, so I don’t know if Pope Francis really said, “the seers of Medjugorje lie to the people,” or if that was just their chosen headline.
Around the time of the 2013 Conclave, alleged visionary, Ivan Dragicevic, was booked in some venues in South America, including Buenos Aires. Organizers attempted to book him at a local church or the cathedral. This was widely exploited later by pro-Medjugorje sites as, “Pope Francis approved” Ivan’s activities. But, as we will soon see, things are not as they have reported.
Read on for context, analysis and roughly translated portions of the book.
It’s worth noting that Pope Benedict was something of a Medjugorje skeptic and that the bishops of the local diocese have repeatedly said, over the last three decades, “it cannot be affirmed” that anything supernatural is taking place.
Photo via Wikipedia
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