VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — According to an Italian journalist, a secret Vatican consultation held during the Francis pontificate found that over 63% of participants rejected a supernatural explanation for events at Medjugorje.
On August 6, David Murgia published an exclusive report concerning the September 17, 2016, vote on the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje. The judgments, submitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, followed Pope Francis’ decision to refer the case to the Congregation’s ordinary “Feria Quarta” session.
According to Murgia, 33 cardinals, bishops, and experts took part in the process, providing written assessments with supporting arguments for whether the phenomena should be considered of supernatural origin, of non-supernatural origin, or that there was insufficient evidence to reach a definitive judgment. Twenty-one of them judged the Medjugorje events not to be supernatural, nine argued they were supernatural, and three thought merely that the “supernatural character had not been established.”
The 33 participants included CDF then-prefect Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller; Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, then Archbishop of Vienna; Cardinal Donald Wuerl, then Archbishop of Washington; Cardinal Angelo Scola, then Archbishop of Milan; Cardinal Marc Ouellet, then prefect of the Congregation for Bishops; Cardinal Camillo Ruini; Cardinal Vinko Puljić; Cardinal Josip Bozanić; Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta; several theologians and experts; and several members and former members of an earlier international commission on Medjugorje.
Murgia did not attribute individual votes to the 33 participants. However, he declared that he intends to publish those individual positions at a later stage without omissions. He also wrote he was publishing the overall result now only after what he described as detailed checks and controls. Alongside the commission’s report, he said, the Vatican also considered a critical document challenging its conclusions and a further response to that criticism.
Murgia reported that the 2016 consultation followed Pope Francis’ examination of the report produced by the international commission established by Pope Benedict XVI to investigate Medjugorje on March 17, 2010. Known as the Ruini Commission, this first group examined the alleged apparitions that began in Bosnia-Herzegovina in June 1981.
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Murgia argued that the figures reveal the extent of the disagreement surrounding Medjugorje within the Catholic Church. He noted that those who judged against the supernatural origins of events there represented nearly two-thirds of the votes in 2016 while pointing out that the 2010 Ruini Commission had been more open to the possibility of supernatural events, particularly concerning the earliest alleged apparitions in 1981.
On January 17, 2014, Pope Francis suppressed the Ruini Commission. On May 12, 2019, he authorized pilgrimages to Medjugorje.
New Norms and ‘Note About the Spiritual Experience Connected with Medjugorje’
On May 17, 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith promulgated new “norms for proceeding in the discernment of alleged supernatural phenomena.” According to those norms, it is possible to evaluate the pastoral and spiritual fruits associated with a phenomenon without necessarily reaching a definitive declaration that the alleged events themselves were supernatural.
For these reasons, the new norms explicitly intend to avoid affirming supernatural origin even in positive cases: “it must be noted that, as a general rule, it is not foreseen in these Norms that ecclesiastical authority would give a positive recognition of the divine origin of alleged supernatural phenomena,” they read.
That framework was subsequently applied to Medjugorje. On September 19, 2024, Cardinal Víctor M. Fernández published a “Note About the Spiritual Experience Connected with Medjugorje.” It presents Medjugorje as a spiritual experience rich in pastoral fruits — conversion, renewed sacramental life, vocations, prayer, charity — while insisting that these fruits do not prove the supernatural origin of the alleged apparitions.
The Note highlights a strongly Christocentric and scriptural core in many messages yet also acknowledges elements requiring caution: occasional imprecise or theologically inaccurate expressions such as “my Son, one and triune;” repeated threats or apocalyptic tones; messages that seem to direct parish life in ways that bypass ordinary ecclesial structures; and an insistent focus on listening to and spreading the messages that risks overshadowing the primacy of Scripture.
Despite these concerns, the Note concludes that the phenomenon merits a Nihil obstat (official approval), encouraging pastoral engagement while maintaining doctrinal prudence and emphasizing that the faithful are never obliged to believe in the messages.
In the presentation of the Note, Fernández clearly stated that the Church’s current approach to Medjugorje focuses less on proving supernatural origins and more on evaluating the spiritual vitality that has grown around this devotion.
Murgia also stated the newly published figures should be understood against the background of an intense division surrounding the Medjugorje Affaire. He wrote that the controversy placed the Church at risk of what he considers a very deep fracture, “almost a schism,” with one side calling for a decisive rejection of the phenomenon and another maintaining that at least some of the events beginning in 1981 deserved a more open assessment.
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