LONDON (CNS): The Vatican has authorised “severe cautionary and disciplinary measures” against a priest who served as spiritual director to the visionaries in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has written to Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar-Duvno, whose diocese covers Medjugorje, to inform him that they are investigating the case of Franciscan Father Tomislav Vlasic.
The congregation has asked the bishop, for the good of the faithful, to inform the community of the canonical status of the Bosnian priest, whose actions automatically provoked Vatican sanctions.
In a statement posted on the website of the Mostar-Duvno diocese, Bishop Peric explained that Fr Vlasic has been reported to the congregation “for the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspicious mysticism, disobedience toward legitimately issued orders” and charges that he violated the Sixth Commandment.
A decree confirming action against Fr Vlasic was signed by the prefect of the doctrinal congregation Cardinal William Levada and the minister general of the Order of Friars Minor Fr Jose Rodriguez Carballo.
It confined Fr Vlasic to a Franciscan monastery in Italy and banned him from contact with the Queen of Peace community, which he founded, or with his lawyers without permission from his superior.
He is banned from making public appearances, preaching and hearing confessions, and he will be required to make a solemn profession of the Catholic faith. The Vatican has warned Fr Vlasic that he will be ex-communicated if he violates any of the prohibitions.
In 1984, he wrote to Pope John Paul II to say that he was the one “who through divine providence guides the seers of Medjugorje”.
Four years later – after it was revealed that he fathered a child with a nun – he moved to Parma, Italy, where he set up the Queen of Peace religious community dedicated to the Medjugorje apparitions.
Fr Vlasic is the second spiritual adviser to the visionaries to be suspended from his ministry. Bishop Peric confirmed the suspension of the faculties of the other priest, Fr Jozo Zovko, in 2004.
The Medjugorje phenomenon began on June 25, 1981, when six children told a priest they had seen Mary on a hillside near their town. Since then, Mary is said to have appeared to the six more than 40,000 times and imparted hundreds of messages.
But three church commissions failed to find evidence to support their claims, and the bishops of the former Yugoslavia declared in 1991 that “it cannot be affirmed that these matters concern supernatural apparitions or revelations”.
In 1985, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the doctrinal congregation and now Pope Benedict XVI, banned official, diocesan or parish-sponsored pilgrimages to the shrine. However, individual Catholics are still free to visit and have a priest with them.
