Medjugorje Marian visions – not out of the blue

“Hapsburg Austria occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878, terminating four centuries of Muslim Ottoman rule. They then decided to regularize the position of the Catholic Church in their new province by restoring an episcopal hierarchy. But in Herzegovina, the Franciscans had tilled this particular corner of the Lord’s vineyard alone, under Muslim persecution, and without bishops, for centuries.  They regarded the new bishops with suspicion. As Croatian ecclesiastical expert Inoslav Besker puts it: ‘The Franciscans have considered Herzegovina theirs since Turkish times, and when in the 1980s the Bishop of Mostar tried to intrude regular clergy into the parishes, he met huge resistance. Some say it’s no accident that Our Lady appeared at Medjugorje soon afterwards.’

“Some in the bishops’ camp certainly view Medjugorje  as little more than a Franciscan plot….”

“People’s Shrine,” The Tablet (London) 6/5/2010; Supplement p.2.