On June 24, 1981, two young girls were walking in the hamlet of Bijakovici in the parish of Medjugorje when a woman holding an infant appeared high on a hill among the boulders and brambles of Mount Podbrdo. Instinctively, they knew it was the Virgin Mary, but they did not approach her. They and four other children felt called to return the next day, and Our Blessed Mother drew them to her, effortlessly transporting them up the mountain, over boulders and thorny bushes. The Blessed Mother introduced herself as the Queen of Peace. They fell to their knees and began to pray. She prayed with them and promised to return the next day. Our Lady has regularly appeared in Medjugorje ever since, as have countless stories of conversion and miracles, making The Story of Medjugorje one of the most fascinating in modern church history.
Since then, Our Lady has been appearing and giving messages to the world through these six visionaries, Marija, Vicka, Ivan, Mirjana, Jakov, and Ivanka. She has told them that God has sent Her to our world and that these years She is spending with us, are a time of Grace granted by God. She has come to guide us to Her Son, Jesus, and invites us to convert our lives back to God and to urgently pray for Peace with all our hearts. “Peace, peace, peace, and only peace. Peace must reign between man and God, and between all people!” She leads us by walking with us and guiding us step by step, message by message.
Official position of the Catholic Church
On 11 February 2017, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Henryk Hoser, S.A.C., the Bishop of Praga (Warsaw), as Special Envoy of the Holy See to Medjugorje. By the end of 2017, Hoser had announced that the Vatican's position was in favor of organizing pilgrimages. “Today, dioceses and other institutions can organize official pilgrimages. It’s no longer a problem,” explained Archbishop Hoser. "Pope Francis recently asked an Albanian cardinal to give his blessing to the faithful at Medjugorje." "I am full of admiration for the work the Franciscans are doing there," the Polish archbishop reported. "With a relatively small team - there are only a dozen of them - they do a huge job of welcoming pilgrims. Every summer they organize a youth festival. This year, there were 50,000 young people from around the world, with more than 700 priests."
On 12 May 2019, the Vatican officially authorized pilgrimage to Medjugorje. The first Vatican sanctioned pilgrimage then took place for five days from 2-6 August 2019. During the pilgrimage, approximately 60,000 young Catholics from 97 countries took part in the celebration of a youth festival. Fourteen archbishops and bishops and about 700 Catholic priests joined the festivities as well.
