Pope Defrocked the Priest From Medjugorje
According to the news agencies’ reports published in the dailies on July 29, the Pope
Benedict the Sixteenth had defrocked the Catholic priest Tomislav Vlasic, responsible for establishing a cult of Our Lady in the village of Medjugorje in Herzegovina. The informed about the events in the Vatican view this act as evidence that the Roman-Catholic Church dissociates itself from the alleged apparitions of Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ.
As reported by the news agencies, the Pope approved the laicization of Vlasic – his return to the status of an ordinary believer – a year after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an influential theological body, had suspended this Franciscan and put him to house arrest in an Italian monastery under suspicion of heresy and schism, as well as for the sexual offense.
Vlasic has for years claimed to be a "spiritual adviser" of the six children of Medjugorje, who in 1981 "saw" the Virgin Mary and, despite a bitter conflict with the then Mostar bishop who did not believe him, succeeded in making the village in the western Herzegovina a world-famous place of pilgrimage, which has so far been visited by over thirty million believers. In the meantime, Vlasic quarreled with the “seers” and founded a religious community in Italy, which additionally infuriated the Vatican.
Father Jose Rodriguez Kabeljau, General Franciscan priest, has announced that Vlasic has been dropped from the order and that, according to the decision of the Curia, he will not be allowed to preach or to publicly speak about any religious topic. If he opposes this decision, he will be threatened by excommunication - prohibition of receiving Communion.
At the time when the current Pope was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and at the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, he banned believers to go on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje, but almost no one cared about his ban.
Up to now, three Vatican Commissions have failed to confirm the alleged apparitions of Our Lady in Herzegovina, although six Catholics claim that they have seen Mary about 40,000 times in the last 28 years. Those Catholics became rich in the meantime and, according to some Western journalists, own expensive cars and large houses, with a tennis court built next to one of them.
The decision of the Vatican to defrock Fra Tomislav Vlasic surprised a large number of the Roman Catholic faithful throughout the world, because the official Vatican's move, for the first time after 28 years, openly denies the Medjugorje apparitions. The ministerial resolution was signed by the Pope in silence as far back as in March, but was not officially announced until Sunday, July 26, as reported by the Belgrade daily Politika.
Michael Jones with Benedict the Sixteenth.The journalist Michael Jones, Ph.D, former editor of the Catholic Fidelity magazine, and since 1995 the editor of Culture Wars, investigated the phenomenon of the apparition of the Gospa in Medjugorje for a number of years. The results of his research were published in his two books seeking an answer to the question of the alleged apparitions of Mary in Medjugorje. Back in March last year, he granted us a broader interview about those investigations: “Twenty years ago I decided to go to Medjugorje to write an article on the apparitions for Fidelity magazine. When I got there, one of the first things I did was to meet with Bishop Pavao Zanic at his residence in Mostar. He told me in no uncertain terms that the apparitions were a hoax. He also told me that he had met with Cardinal Ratzinger (then the Pope, web-team’s remark), who agreed with him, and the pope, who said nothing. This meeting led to contacts which led to the first book Medjugorje: The Untold Story. It was the first time anyone said anything negative about Medjugorje. I became interested in the history of Yugoslavia as a result of my research on Medjugorje. This interest intensified after the civil war broke out in the '90s because one of the claims of the so-called ‘Gospa’ and her followers was that peace among ethnic groups in Yugoslavia was the proof of the authenticity of the apparitions of Our Lady Queen of Peace,” said Michael Jones. His other book is titled The Medjugorje Deception, from which we have reprinted a part to accompany the interview.
Following the publication of the news that the Pope has defrocked the priest Vlasic, Belgrade Politika, the oldest daily in the Balkans, published an interview with Michael Jones in Serbian entitled Kraj velike prevare u Medjugorju (End of Big Fraud in Medjugorje).
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Published on August 6, 2009
