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It Is Difficult To Find A Pilgrim Who Does Not Speak Of The Peace And Tranquillity Of Cross Hill, Location Of The Supposed Apparitions That Turned A Remote And Beggared Village Into One Of The Most Renowned Corners Of Bosnia.
MORE than 1,000,000 people visit Medjugorje every year, thousands of them Irish, and most come to climb the hill where six neighbors claim to have first seen and spoken to the Virgin Mary in June 1981.
It is hard to find a pilgrim who doesn't speak of the peace and tranquillity of Cross Hill, location of the supposed apparitions that turned a remote and pauperised hamlet into one of the most noted corners of Bosnia.
Few visitors make the short trip from Medjugorje to Surmanci. It is only a few miles from Cross Hill, but far removed from the guest houses, restaurants and memento shops of its respected neighbour.
There is deep quiet in this place, but only those who do not know its history could speak of peace and tranquillity.
In Aug 1941, local members of the fascist Croat Ustashe organisation murdered some 600 Serb men, women and youngsters in deep natural pits on this barren plateau. Ethnic cleansing might have entered the lexicon in the 1990s Balkan wars, though it was grimly familiar to a prior generation of families from this region.
In the 1940s, the rough hills of Herzegovina saw vicious fighting between the Ustashe who ruled Croatia as a Nazi puppet state Serb patriot Chetniks and the red Partisans controlled by Josip Broz Tito, who would eventually overcome and rule Yugoslavia until his passing in 1980.
Each side committed gruesome atrocities, including Tito's Partisans, who massacred THIRTY Franciscan friars at Siroki Brijeg near Medjugorje, as punishment for supporting the Ustashe.
The Croat Catholic Church backed the Ustashe and its drive for an ethnically pure greater Croatia, and several monks and Franciscan monks were charged with detestable war crimes.
After the war, Tito tried to neutralise the bitterness between parts of the Yugoslav population by suppressing faith and patriotism. He depicted the inter-ethnic fighting as a straightforward struggle between nazi Ustashe and Chetniks and anti-fascist Partisans ; the second had won, fascism had been routed and the roots of conflict had been removed.
In places like Medjugorje, though, the wounds never really healed. Croats felt humiliated at being made to build a testimony to the Ustashe's Serb victims at Surmanci, while official Yugoslav history depicted the Franciscans executed by Partisans at Siroki Brijeg as nazi villains.
The apparitions started at a tricky time for Yugoslavia : the stabilising force that was Tito had died the year before and the Catholic Comradeship movement was roiling red Poland, impressed by a new east Western European pope, John Paul II.
The Yugoslav authorities immediately denounced reports of the visions which took place just before the 40th anniversary of the Surmanci massacre as a "clerical-nationalist" conspiracy roughed up by Croat extremists.
Local Franciscans quickly took command of the Medjugorje phenomenon, declaring the children's visions to be genuine and installing themselves as intercessors between the young "seers" and a Croat public that was clamouring for religious experience after many years of official state atheism.
Legions of people were soon gathering in Medjugorje for daily "messages" from Our Lady ; the authorities arrested a local friar and others whom they suspected of participation in the alleged hoax. Over the course of time nevertheless the cash- strapped Yugoslav authorities realized the commercial potential of Medjugorje.
By the mid-1980s, Belgrade had no difficulty with the daily visions or visitors but the Catholic Church did.
The Bishop of Mostar, the senior church official in the region, has for decades been at loggerheads with the Franciscans over their refusal to relinquish control of certain parishes in Herzegovina, where they have been present for decades and luxuriate in the deep faithfulness of local people.
This dispute was raging when the visions commenced ; some people believe the Franciscans used them or helped invent them to guard and augment their position in Medjugorje.
Unlike those at Fatima and Lourdes, the Vatican has never recognized the providence of the Medjugorje visions. In 2009 it defrocked a previous Franciscan "spiritual director" to the visionaries amid claims that he exaggerated the apparitions and sired a child with a nun.
Several other "disobedient" Franciscans have been expelled from the parish.
Like his predecessor Pavao Zanic, the Bishop of Mostar Ratko Peric is extremely scornful about the "visions" and the way in which the Franciscans and other groups have behaved in Medjugorje. Their striking comments on the phenomenon which suggest it is just a rewarding hoax are posted in English on the diocese website (cbismo.com).
However , the Franciscans of Herzegovina won't give up Medjugorje without a fight. They are hard and tenacious, as everybody from the Ottomans to Bishop Peric has found. During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, Peric was abducted and beaten by Croat militiamen in a local Franciscan chapel, till UN troops and the mayor of Mostar secured his release.
The war freed another wave of ethnic cleaning in Herzegovina, much of it by members of the region's Croat majority, who flattened mosques and Orthodox churches as they drove Muslims and Serbs from their homes.
The commemorative at Surmanci was blown up by Croats, many of whom delighted in their Ustashe heritage.
A trickle of pilgrims kept coming to Medjugorje throughout the war. Few maybe realised that atrocities were taking place nearby, or that their Queen of Peace had been dubbed the "Ustasha Virgin" by Serbs and Muslims who saw her as a symbol of Croatian ultra-nationalism.
Medjugorje last week marked 30 years since the apparitions began and the crowds are as huge than ever .
The Vatican is now examining the apparitions and the many thousands of supposedly divine messages that have made Medjugorje's name.
For the church, the Franciscans, the people of Medjugorje and the visionaries as well as millions of followers a good deal rests on its decision,writes tagza.com.
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