From the Seminarian — July 26th, 2026
Last week, our seminarian, Jonathan Galvas, gave a beautiful and informative presentation on Marian apparitions throughout the history of the Church and the spiritual benefit and impact they have on the faithful. This week, Jonathan is our guest bulletin writer where he provides a recap of his presentation and shares about his experience at the Encounter Ministries conference and upcoming summer intensive.
Marian Apparitions, Church Discernment, and Medjugorje: A Recap from Jonathan
Fifty million pilgrims. Over 1,000 religious vocations. A town that St. John Paul II once said that if he weren’t pope, he’d be there hearing confessions. Last week’s presentation looked at Marian apparitions, how the Church discerns them, and why one small village in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Medjugorje, has become one of the most visited Marian sites in the world.
• Mary, Our Mother
Scripture itself points to Mary as our mother. The Incarnation, the greatest miracle in history, opens the Gospel of Luke, and St. John reminds us that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God became man through Mary’s womb, and one of Christ’s final acts before His death was to entrust her to us as our mother: “Behold your mother” (John 19:26–27). Mary’s maternal role is the foundation for how the Church understands everything that follows: her apparitions, her messages, and why they deserve careful discernment rather than either blind acceptance or dismissal.
• Public and Private Revelation
The Church distinguishes between public and private revelation. Public revelation is transmitted through Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and contains the fullness of God’s self-disclosure, binds all Catholics, and is safeguarded by the Magisterium (for example, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the seven sacraments). Private revelation, including supernatural communications such as apparitions, visions, and locutions (interior words or messages) are meant to help believers live the Gospel more fully.
• Marian Apparitions Through History
Mary has been appearing to the faithful since the earliest days of the Church. The first reported apparition, technically a bilocation (appearing in two places at once), occurred around A.D. 40, when Mary appeared to St. James with the infant Jesus along the Ebro River in Spain, urging him to continue evangelizing and asking that a church be built in her honor, today’s Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza. Since then, the Church has recorded over 2,500 reported Marian apparitions, 500 from the twentieth century alone. Mary is often sent in times of crisis to call us to conversion and a renewed sacramental life. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, put it, her purpose is to call the world back to the essentials: conversion, prayer, and the sacraments. Many of our most beloved devotions trace back to approved private revelation, including the Rosary, the Brown Scapular, First Saturday devotion, the Seven Sorrows Rosary, and the healing waters of Lourdes.
• How the Church Discerns Apparitions
Given how many apparitions are reported, the Church needs a careful process for telling authentic ones from the rest. Since the Council of Trent (1563), that authority rested with the local bishop, a process that could take decades to resolve. In 2024, Pope Francis issued new norms shifting final authority to the Vatican, aiming for greater transparency and speed given how quickly news and pilgrimage now spread through modern media. The Catholic Church uses rigorous investigations led by the local bishop and Vatican experts to discern Marian apparitions. They establish whether the event is credible (psychologically and doctrinally) and its spiritual fruits are beneficial. Crucially, the Church never requires Catholics to believe in them, even after official approval. Under the 2024 norms, the Church generally no longer issues formal declarations that an apparition is supernatural, except in rare cases decided personally by the Pope. With that framework in mind, how does Medjugorje measure up?
• Case Study: Medjugorje
In 1981, Our Lady began appearing to six children, ages 10 to 16, in communist Yugoslavia, where public religious practice was banned. Despite intense state persecution, the children’s testimony never wavered. Mary told them she came to affirm that God exists, choosing Medjugorje because its people had chosen faith over fear under communist rule. Running Medjugorje through the Church’s own steps, across 45 years of oversight and the Vatican’s 14-year investigation, Our Lady’s messages have consistently aligned with Catholic doctrine. As for spiritual fruit (“a good tree cannot bear bad fruit,” Matthew 7:17–20), Medjugorje’s record is extraordinary: roughly 30,000 reported apparitions, an annual youth festival drawing 70,000 attendees, over 1.2 million priests who have celebrated Mass there, 50 million pilgrims, more than 1,000 religious vocations, and over 500 documented healings, alongside phenomena such as miracles of the sun. Locally called “the five stones,” the core practices Our Lady taught, and that she asks all the faithful to take up, are daily prayer (including the Rosary), fasting, daily Scripture reading, monthly confession, and devout Mass attendance. St. John Paul II was among Medjugorje’s strongest advocates, remarking that “today’s world has lost its sense of the supernatural, but many are searching for it, and find it in Medjugorje, through prayer, penance, and fasting,” and adding that if he were not pope, he would be there hearing confessions. On September 19, 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith granted Medjugorje a Nihil Obstat, recognizing genuine spiritus fruit and permitting and encouraging devotion and pilgrimage. It has not declared that the apparitions themselves are of supernatural origin; that question remains open to personal discernment. Building on public pilgrimages already authorized in 2019, the 2024 ruling gives the faithful the Church’s clearest green light yet: whatever one concludes about the apparitions themselves, the fruit growing at Medjugorje is real, and its five stones–prayer, fasting, Scripture, confession, and Mass--are worth taking up in our own parish life. Furthermore, it was during a pilgrimage to Medjugorje that I received my vocational call from the Lord to the priesthood.
Discernment Tips for the Laity
Because the Church will no longer formally “approve” an apparition as supernatural, the burden shifts to us: we need to be equipped to discern well rather than waiting for Rome to decide for us. Two extremes are worth avoiding. The first is becoming so absorbed in private revelation that we neglect the Gospels and the ordinary teaching of the Magisterium, treating a visionary’s latest message as more urgent than the Mass readings. The second is dismissing all private revelation out of hand, which can quietly close our hearts to one of the ways God pours out His grace: through a mother who loves us and wants to draw us closer to her Son. In practice, that means holding three things together. We are free to believe or not believe in any given private revelation, even one the Church has approved. We should trust the Church’s discernment process grounded in Scripture and Tradition, over our own enthusiasm or unofficial sources online. And where a message like Medjugorje’s does bear good fruit, we’re invited to receive the grace it offers, not as a replacement for the Gospel, but as an aid to living it more deeply.
More information and resources can be found in the presentation slides at Marian Apparition Presentation, St. Pat’s 2026 (Jonathan Galvas)*. This event was also recorded and video content will be shared soon.
In the meantime, for more information or for questions, please feel free to email me at Galvas.Jonathan@shms.edu.
Encounter 4-Day Intensive: August 3 to 6
Last week, I attended the Encounter Conference for the first time. Serving on the liturgical team, I helped coordinate massive Masses averaging 6 bishops, 150 priests, and over 5,000 faithful. The energy was electric, the teachings were engaging, and the presence of the Holy Spirit was felt. A highlight was witnessing countless healings during the service—including my own, as my strained Achilles tendon was healed through prayer! I left the conference with a strengthened faith and renewed spirit of evangelization.
Experience it for yourself! Join us for this year’s Encounter 4-Day Intensive at St. Pat’s from August 3 to 6. It offers a powerful introduction to the core teachings of Identity, Prophecy, Healing, and Inner Healing. Hope to see you there. Click here to sign up.
Your servant in the Lord,
Jonathan