Medjugorje - Day Six

English Mass was held in St James Church at 10am, with eight priests and two deacons on the altar. As usual the church was packed, with a large Irish contingent. Indeed, the concluding hymn was Our Lady of Knock with the refrain:

Golden Rose, Queen of Ireland

All my cares and troubles cease
As we kneel with love before you
Lady of Knock, our Queen of Peace.

The main celebrant was a priest from our hotel and the other three concelebrated. The four are vastly different characters: today’s lead is middle-aged, occasionally in a wheelchair, usually leaning on a stick, and stays in the background; another, tall and thin, has a distinct transatlantic accent, developed from working many years in the deep south of the US, where we underwent a baptism of fire during Hurricane Katrina; the third is more elderly, rather strict-looking in appearance and always wears black clerical garb - but has a great singing voice for both religious and secular songs, and at the end of last night’s Rosary he went through all the hymns to Mary that I knew and many more, ending with a superfast litany; the fourth is a wonderful character, smaller, stouter, kindlier, with a constant mischievous smile and a twinkle in his eye, often joking with and hiding from the guides, laid-back to the extent that he lies down to rest at the slightest opportunity – for example, between Rosary mysteries - but he is appropriately serious and focused when hearing confessions. A lovely man and priest.    

The same guitarist-singer from last night’s Rosary led the praise, her beautiful soprano voice with its mild quavering timbre soaring above the congregation. We stopped to thank her on the way out and, in response to a query, she assured us that she was not a professional misician, just a pilgrim from Donnegal. What a voice! What a gift - and she uses it well to offer praise and support worship.

 

 

In the afternoon we went for a walk in the church grounds and visited the statue of the Risen Christ. I don’t know much about it but I recall that the knee is supposed to leak an unknown liquid thicker than water but thinner than treacle. The shops here sell packs of ten linen squares with the image of Our Lady printed on them so that people can dip them in the mysterious liquid. When we visited there was a queue of about ten people and several had their ‘squares’ with them and were busy rubbing the knee of the statue.

 

Later, after saying the Divinc Mercy chaplet, the guide talked about a former priest of the parish, Fr Slavko Barbaric, who died at age 54 while climbing Cross Mountain. He is revered locally for protecting the visionaries from the (local and church) authorities, for creating an orphanage and children’s homes for orphans and for doing many ‘works of mercy.’ He was also an effective confessor, and did much to publicise the apparitions and create an effective infrastructure for visiting pilgrims. According to an alleged message from the Blessed Virgin, he is now in Heaven, so a visit to his grave is often made by locals and visitors, particularly those wanting his intercession. Indeed, his grave is adorned with quite a number of candles, testimony to the attachment to his memory.

 

I had the feeling that Joe Walsh Tours are scraping the barrel a bit for ‘events’; a review of the draft tour agenda showed that we have still not had the advertised ‘meeting with the visionaries’ that was scheduled to happen on two separate days, or the talk with one of the local Franciscan priests.

During dinner, I questioned the tour guide, first asking her if the local Bishop of Mostar-Duvno (who is responsible for Medjugorje Parish) was supportive of the apparitions. She replied that he was not, his personal view was that the apparitions were not supernatural (I knew from the internet that he had expressed this view some years ago, but he might have changed in the meantime). Interestingly, she then went on to say that the visionaries had reigned back all public discussions or promotions of the apparitions either at the request of the authorities or to avoid prejudicing the upcoming Vatican pronouncement. That explains the gaps in our schedule!

As usual, International Mass in Croatian at 7pm followed by prayers, with about 50 priests on the altar and several thousand people present.