Medjugorje News & Articles of year 2011

At the May 2001 American Family Foundation Conference in Newark, New Jersey, several ex-members of Caritas of Birmingham offered their stories to a distinguished panel of psychologists and cult exit counselors. It was the overwhelming opinion of the panel that the leader of Caritas of Birmingham, Terry Colafrancesco (self-styled “A Friend of Medjugorje”), fits the profile of a cult leader, much the same as David Koresh and Jim Jones were leaders of their groups. There are several factors that determine whether a group can be classified as a true cult.

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed” (Jn 20, 29)

Christianne Claessens – the first witness of healing of woman from Switzerland Joelle Beuret – Devanthery in Medjugorje, in October 2010, as she describes the pilgrimage and all of the events.

By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When the bishop of Green Bay, Wis., recently recognized a series of Marian apparitions from 1859, it marked the first time apparitions in the United States received official approval.

That's quite an achievement considering that more than 1,500 visions of Mary have been reported around the world, but in the past century only nine cases have received official church approval as being "worthy of belief," said an expert in Marian apparitions.

(RNS) Dirt at an ancient holy site in Chimayo, N.M. reputedly cures a woman’s rare bone cancer.

In North Carolina, a 14-year-old girl stricken with pneumonia is removed from life support but survives after an angelic image appears on a security monitor outside her hospital room.

A Texas man lives despite being cut in half after being run over by a train.

Were these acts of God, or is there a scientific explanation for events that seem to defy reason?

For an hour every Wednesday night (10 p.m. EST), that divisive question is the focus of “Miracle Detectives,” one of prime-time television’s first forays into exploring the miraculous.

STANDING tall and broad, occasionally kilted and with the rosiness of cheek sported by those who thrive outdoors, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow wouldn’t look out of place on the front of a packet of porridge oats, swinging a caber.

Edward and Patricia Locks are now for over 10 years concerned parents of their daughters Erin and Jenny living in Caritas of Birmingham.

Recently someone attempting to defend Caritas of Birmingham and its leader, self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje" (Terry Colafrancesco), posted a letter attributed to Edward and Patricia Locks. This letter was not posted or written by the Locks. The originator of this letter is guilty of fraud.

A beautiful, extroverted, lively girl, in love with God. But the beauty of God’s plan for her life becomes shiningly apparent in the last two years of her illness. 18 years of life: a model for people of all ages.

Chiara Luce Badano was born is Sassello, near Savona (Northwest Italy), on October 29, 1971, to parents who had been trying to have a child for 11 years. Her childhood and adolescence were serene: she lived in a loving, united family from which she received a solid Christian education.

Caritas of Birmingham - Question from anonymous on 12-23-2010:

Dear Dr. Geraghty, Concerning the upcoming apparition at Caritas of Birmingham with a visionary from Medjudgorje (Marija) March 19 - March 23, 2010, advertised on their website, okay for Roman Catholics to attend? Thank you!

The young Franciscan Peter Kim Dae Woo visited Međugorje for the second time. He comes from the parish Incon in Korea, where he serves as the assistant parish priest. He was ordained in 2009, despite his great desire to become a singer. He studied at the University for electrical engineering, but he dreamt of music, and that had even reduced his student’s performance at the university. “I studied for four years, but I was not interested in that at all. I would spend most of my time playing and singing, the music was my whole life. I was student only up to the moment when I got to know music a bit better. At one point, I was no longer attending classes. Back in those days, I used to have a nick name “factory of curses”, because all of the words that were coming out from my mouth were bad, but I did not care for that at all. I only cared for music and lived in its world completely. I socialised with ‘so-called musicians’”

by Prof. Marco Corvaglia

The community Caritas of Birmingham (Alabama) has gained much publicity and visibility in the U.S. by hosting many times (162 from 1988 to 2011), year after year, Marija Pavlović's, the Medjugorje visionary, daily apparitions.

So it is particularly interesting and significant to know the doctrines that are observed in the community and are spread by its founder and owner, Terry Colafrancesco.

He published in the mid-nineties, under his usual pseudonym of Friend of Medjugorje, the book How to Change Your Husband [Caritas, Sterrett (AL), 1996], printed by the community itself and now also downloadable from its official website.

Reading the book one is astonished by the male chauvinism, sometimes grotesque, that seems to characterize it: for example, he writes that the devil, in order to hide to people the potentially destructive nature of women, got persons to quit the right habit of giving female names to hurricanes that each year lash the shores of the Atlantic.

Actually, this isn’t simply absurd male chauvinism, but rather adhesion to well-known religious ideologies.

By Michael H. Brown

... I'll go by what the Church ends up formally concluding (it is currently in the hands of a Vatican commission) -- period -- but my personal belief is that this is a place halfway between here and the hereafter, a supernatural spot where the dimensional partition is thin. I had gone through my "conversion" (actually, my return) to the Church years before, as I said (independent of any apparition), but this brought me into a deeper and richer phase of Catholicism. It also spurred my writing in the Catholic realm. Not only did virtually everyone change for the better after visiting, but did so profoundly -- converting others, establishing Adoration in their parishes upon return to the U.S., starting uncountable Rosary groups, and in many cases becoming priests. The seers are human -- and not perfect (is anyone?) -- but the good fruits vastly outweighed any "bad."

"I was raised in a devout Lutheran home in New York and always believed in God, but from my teen years onward I rejected organized religion, believing it was created totally by man and not by God. After marrying Ed and reluctantly agreeing to raise our children Catholic, I told him, ' Don't EVER expect me to become Catholic. You have to be born that way - you'd have to be crazy to choose it voluntarily! ' I rejected the Church's teachings, thinking they were made up by men who had nothing better to do than make people feel guilty and miserable. I occasionally went to church with my family, but found it profoundly boring.

... A striking example of the healing power of the cross is Jaime Jaramillo, affectionately known as Papa Jaime in his home country of Colombia. Papa Jaime is one of the stories in a book I wrote called Full of Grace: Miraculous Stories of Healing and Conversion through Mary’s Intercession. For many years now, he has single-handedly rescued children who actually live in the underground sewer canals of Colombia. Again and again, he picks up his cross and enters the sewers. Here’s how he speaks of his experience.

“Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”
(John 20,21)

To all parishioners, pilgrims, friends, benefactors, and to all men of goodwill a

Blessed and Happy Easter!

Parish priest and the Franciscans

Photos

A young man from the United States, Michael, came to Medjugorje in March and he just sent me a letter. I share it with you because it may encourage and inspire each one of us in our personal call to prayer in the midst of our daily concerns.

"My last pilgrimage to Medjugorje was life changing for me, as the Gospa revealed to me early in the pilgrimage that I needed to pray for peace in my soul. I realized that, though I prayed and believed and had many miracles happen to me in the past, I still did not have much peace inside me. It was hard for me to pray with love, to mean what I was saying.

The following is Deacon Ken Finn’s account of his remarkable interactions with Mary, the Mother of God.

My first encounter with the Blessed Mother happened when I was travelling in an RV with my wife, Marie. We co-authored a Catholic Bible-study, called The Bread of Life, and we were making a grand circle, clock-wise through the outer states of the country, introducing our study to parishes. One night, at the beginning of our trip, we parked our RV in the parking lot of the mission in Santa Barbara, and as we lay down to go to bed, our conversation turned to the sadness of people who are unable to bond with their mothers from birth. My wife and I had adopted three children, who were about eight weeks when we got them, and we wondered if they might have been deprived of the precious gift of early bonding.

The warm surf of La Jolla, Calif., isn't a setting people associate with the Virgin Mary. But on many days, there is a surfer whose passion for the perfect wave is nothing compared to his head-over-heels love for the Holy Mother.

His name is Donald Calloway and he picked up surfing as a military brat bouncing around the United States and Japan.

He also picked up marijuana, heroin, LSD, shoplifting and money laundering for the Japanese mafia. By the age of 20, he had a rap sheet, a drug habit and serious thoughts of suicide.

"After having gone to two rehabs, been in jail, kicked out of a foreign country, I was at my crisis in life. ... I picked up a book that my parents had on their bookshelf about the Virgin Mary," Calloway said.

During the 70’s, in Germany. Monica was 17 when she lost her mother whom she loved very much. She was left behind with three siblings and her father who was a non-practicing protestant and an architect near Bonn. Monica detested her father. He had very little interaction with his children, so she found him cold, rigid, and insensitive. Since she was unable to connect with him on a heart level, she moved out at 17, using her studies as an excuse.

Argyll, Scotland (CNN) -- Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow was enjoying a pint at his local pub in the Scottish Highlands when he got an idea that would change his life -- and the lives of thousands of others.

It was 1992, and MacFarlane-Barrow and his brother Fergus had just seen a news report about refugee camps in Bosnia. The images of people suffering in the war-torn country shocked the two salmon farmers, who'd visited there as teenagers and remembered the warmth of the Bosnian people.

"We began saying 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just do one small thing to help?' " MacFarlane-Barrow says.

by Patrick Madrid

Many adherents of the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje to whom I have spoken personally have invoked the (also alleged) fondness and support of Pope John Paul II for it. "The Pope was in favor of Medjugorje," they reason, "and given what a good and holy pontiff he was, it's highly unlikely that Medjugorje could be anything other than an authentic Marian apparition. And, conversely, it's an even stronger reason for believing in Medjugorje."

This is a form of what's known as an a fortiori argument. For example, one might say, "If I think that Medjugorje is true, that's all well and good. But if even the pope thinks it's true, then the possibility that it is true is much stronger, much more likely."

by Mark P. Shea

One of the big puzzles that many Catholics have grappled with in recent years is the baffling phenomenon of some charismatic figure (one thinks of a Rev. Marcial Maciel, for instance) who can, for years, inspire or otherwise offer blessing and solace to good and decent Christians who are full of faith and obedient to the Church. Said figure can preach or write clear and engaging explications of the Faith. He can do all sorts of wonderful things that help struggling souls find healing, that give new purpose to the hopeless, and that help the lost discover the riches of grace in Christ. He is beloved by his devotees– and not without reason.

And yet that charismatic figure then turns out to be bound up with very serious sin or even shown to be, as in Father Maciel’s case, a monster of diabolical proportions.

The famous Italian water polo player, 24 years old Alex Giorgetti came to Medjugorje. He comes from Savona in Italy, and he is offense player of Pro Recco, as well as the member of men’s Italy National Water Polo Team. They were the champions at the World Championship this year. Young Alex had meeting first with Fr. Miljenko Šteko, the Head of the Information Office in Medjugorje and gave him the water polo ball signed by all of the players of Italian team. He later shared his life experience with journalist of Radio Station “Mir” Medjugorje. He told us about his conversion that he experienced a year ago when he met Jesus in Mary and is very happy after having completely changed his life.

The number of more than four hundred thousand (406,300) Holy Communions that were given during last August is more than all of the previous statistics in the last thirty years of Medjugorje. In accordance with that, the number of priests who celebrated Holy Masses in Medjugore was more than seven thousand – 7,280, in average 234 daily. The river of pilgrims continues in the first days of September as well. According to the record of Information Office there are bigger groups of pilgrims from Poland, Belgium, Slovakia, Lebanon, Spain, Argentina, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, the United States and England.

We met Fr. Frank Gindro from Denmark and asked him to share his experience with us. He said that he feels special presence of Our Lady here, “It is a feeling I did not have for a long time. I pray for people in my country that have lost hope in their lives. I will come back to Medjugorje!”

What is your life mission? Have you ever contemplated it? More importantly, have you ever asked the Holy Spirit to guide you in completing His plan for you? As we travel along our life journey, it helps to pull over at occasional rest stops and ask ourselves, “Is what I am doing in life my mission? Is there more, or something different I should be focusing on?”

By Paolo Gambi

As Silvio Berlusconi grapples with the greatest crisis the Italian republic has ever seen, a member of his extended family has gone on a long retreat to Medjugorje. Ania Golędzinowska, the Polish girlfriend of Paolo Enrico Beretta, the Italian prime minister’s nephew (he is the son of Silvio Berlusconi’s late sister, Maria Antonietta), has moved to the town in Bosnia and Herzegovina to lead a life of prayer.

Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) -- Geeta was 9 when she began wearing makeup, staying up until 2 a.m. and having sex with as many as 60 men a day.

"I used to be really sad and frustrated with what was happening in my life," she said.

The daughter of Nepalese peasant farmers, Geeta -- now 26 -- had been sold to a brothel in India by a member of her extended family. The family member had duped Geeta's visually impaired mother into believing her daughter would get work at a clothing company in Nepal.

Faithful Catholic women posted their following reviews of the book How to Change Your Husband by self-styled "A Friend of Medjugorje", leader of his group Caritas of Birmingham on Amazon bookstore. The concerned women found the book to be "un-catholic", "dangerous" and "extreme."

You can also read the review made for priests of St. James Parish, Medjugorje by Adrian Reimers, Ph.D. from University of Notre Dame.

By Nestor U. Torre, Philippine Daily Inquirer

When June Keithley introduced me to Countess Milona von Hapsburg last Thursday, Oct. 6, I was struck by the great contrast between her storied royal lineage and her sweet simplicity of dress and demeanor.

Here, clearly, was a person who had succeeded in transcending the trappings of "royalty” to focus exclusively on the more important aspects of life that now mattered most to her.

They were mostly significantly led by the spiritual mission that had prompted her many years ago to uproot herself and her family and live in the Marian apparition site of Medjugorje, a small village in the former Yugoslavia.

By Benedetta Sangirardi, affaritaliani.it

Ania has a rented house in Milano. It is colorful and cozy. When you enter, you have the impression of a lively, very lively apartment. It is not one of those houses from which you get out early in the morning just to come back late at night. Ania Goledzinowska, 28, a Polish model, intercepted in the Ruby-gate investigation for the Silvio Berlusconi‘s "Bunga Bunga" nights, engaged to Paolo Beretta (Silvio Berlusconi’s nephew) is a very sweet girl. She welcomes me in a sleeveless shirt and tracksuit, her computer turned on the sofa. Blonde and blue eyes she is involved in writing her second book "a thriller with religious overtones". Far different from her first "With the eyes of a child" ("Con Occhi Di Bambina", published by Piemme Edizione), among the 100 best-selling books in Italy (81^st place).

By Devon Bailey

One of the messages I keep coming back to this year is the message of being “Real”. Meaning speaking only truth. Today I am going to tell you a true story. For some of you it will be hard to believe and for others I hope that it will clear some of your doubts. The story that I am about to tell you is completely true and I am promising right now that I will not lie to you.

Journalists of radio station “Mir” Medjugorje regularly invite pilgrims who come to Medjugorje to witness about their apparitions. Here, we will bring some of those experiences.

Davor Terzic, musician and composer from Rovinj came with his wife Vesna to Medjugorje. Davor is very much present at Croatian music scene and he is regularly participating at every festival of spiritual music. “We visited other Croatian shrines like Marija Bistrica and Vepric, and here we are in Medjugorje, for seventh, eighth time. We try to have a little bit time for ourselves every year. Our work is related to music, we make our living from that. We come here to thank God for everything he has given us in the previous year. This is where we feel fulfilled.”

By Mark Greaves

Mark Greaves meets Magnus Macfarlane-Barrow, founder of a charity that provides free meals to half a million children each day

Magnus Macfarlane-Barrow’s first experience of delivering aid was to drive a Land Rover crammed with food, clothing and medicine from the Highlands of Scotland down to Bosnia. At the time he was a salmon farmer: he had taken just a week’s holiday to do it. When he got back, his family shed was bulging with aid that had poured in from friends and friends of friends. He quit his job, sold his house, and learned to drive articulated lorries. Now, about 20 years later, his charity Mary’s Meals feeds half a million children every day.

But that is not the start of the story. At least, not how Magnus tells it. The real beginning was 10 years earlier, when he was 14, and he went on a pilgrimage to a small village called Medjugorje.

Caritas of Birmingham - Question from Roberta on 6/18/2001:

Is Caritas of Birmingham a legitimate place to get Our Lady's messages? This group mails out blue post cards with the monthly message. The disturbing part is the coomentary by the "Founder", who will not reveal who he or she is. The group claims to have an inside line to the happenings at Medjugorge. Some of the commentary seems overly strict and somewhat outlandish. Can you let me know whether I should continue receiving their mailings?

All the medical tests were negative when Silvia Busi fell very ill at 16. Within days, the all-normal Italian girl found herself in a wheelchair, unable to move her legs. Nine months later Silvia’s illness disappeared as suddenly as it had come about, during an apparition to Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragicevic. The gift of faith is the biggest one I got, she says.

For eight months, 2 years old Joshua battled a last stage cancer that brought him through a transplantation, 80 chemotherapy cures, and 17 radiotherapy sessions. When nothing worked, his parents took their son to Medjugorje. Back home, tests showed 19 tumors and all bone metastases to be gone as the beginning of Joshua’s now complete recovery.