Byzantine Blog

On June 24, 1981, in a parched, desolate area of Croatian part of Bosnia, six Croatian teenagers returned from their smoking hideout telling their (Roman Catholic) priest they had a sighting of the Virgin Mary.

Their bishop, Pavao Zanic, who travelled from Mostar to Medjugorje to personally investigate the claim, quickly caught the pranksters in lies and admonished them not to spread the stories about the “miracle”. But the local Franciscan clergymen decided to disobey their bishop and prompted the teenagers, who started receiving almost daily messages from “Our Lady” (Gospa to Croats), marked by banality, superficiality and heresies. Thus, what would in most places promptly end the same way it started -- as a stupid adolescent prank, in Croatian Bosnia became a dream come true for fanatical Croat nationalists and instant-salvation seekers from around the world. And it has been going on for the past quarter of the century.

While the Vatican took their usual ambiguous attitude about the legitimacy of the apparitions, probably waiting to see how yet another Croatian experiment in mass conversions turns out before issuing a final verdict, many high ranking Roman Catholic clergymen, like Mostar bishop Zanic, were quite vocal in denouncing the “miracle” as an evil hoax from the very beginning. Among them, a renowned Roman Catholic priest, an exorcist and an author, Malachi Martin, who didn't hesitate to issue a devastating condemnation early on: “Medjugorje is a Satanic hoax.”

Another author, who isn't a Roman Catholic and therefore not bound by the sense of blind loyalty to Vatican which keeps ignoring genocide of Eastern Orthodox Serbs committed by Croatian Roman Catholics in the name of their faith, explains why: the new 'shrine', expensive hotels and Medjugorje pilgrim's heaven is built on the very spot where thousands of Orthodox Christians were slaughtered by Croat Nazis, Ustashi, in the WWII. The Orthodox Serbs who were a majority in this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina before 1941, were completely exterminated during the WWII. This is where Serbian Orthodox priests were publicly tortured, castrated and buried alive. The notorious Jagodnjaca pit in Medjugorje became the common grave to over 1,000 Orthodox Serbs, including three priests: Fr. Ilarion, Fr. Bozo Sarenac and Fr. Dusan Blagoja. Medjugorje is the very place where Croatian Ustashi took a train with boxcars loaded with Serbian women and children to the mountain top, and where these women and children were thrown alive off its summit:

I was doubtful she knew anything about the Ustasha or the history of this town, this region - hell, about the Balkans at all. That wouldn't be so bad, but I couldn't help but to wonder if she and other pilgrims sipping the instant coffee of pot-boiled Medjugorje would have been in the least bit perturbed had they known that they were standing on one of the largest mass graves in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country with the world's most prosperous tombstone industry. Would she care that this Catholic shrine was built on the bones of Christian believers?

Cali Ruchala further proves that the entire hoax is created, orchestrated and controlled by the present-day Ustashas, the descendants of those responsible for the slaughter of over 750,000 Orthodox Serbs in WWII and partners-in-crime to those who dispensed with up to 500,000 Serbs in the latest ethnic cleansing of Croatia, in the nineties, the worst pogrom in Europe since the end of WWII:

(...) This entire charade - the children, the messages, the existence of the shrine itself - was one of the most successful propaganda instruments of the [Ustasha] movement which had blown up airplanes, assassinated ambassadors, planted bombs in movie theaters and airports and had prided itself on the extermination of thousands of fellow Christians, right on this very spot.

Describing the trip to Ethnically-Cleansed Medjugorje, Ruchala explains:

Care for the cult of Our Lady of Medjugorje was taken up by the local Croatian clergy. They are mostly Franciscans, but Franciscans of a peculiar, Balkan variety. Balkan Franciscans have jettisoned most of Francis of Assisi's maxims about love for all living creatures, replacing his hymns to spiders and squirrels with romantic rhapsodies about the beauty of all things Croatian. To ancient slaughters they helped themselves with both hands. In the more recent war, their activity was limited to blessing troops and tanks and Croatianizing the wide swathes of torched, empty houses left in their wake.

There is ample evidence in support of the claims that Medjugorje Franciscans have used the funds generously provided by swindled pilgrims for another pogrom of Serbs in Croatia during the nineties. Dr. Giorgio Gagliardi, a world expert who specializes in Medical and Experimental Hypnosis and Hypnotic Psychotherapy, asserted: “Medjugorje is a conspiracy to finance arms for the Croatians' independence, ethnic cleansing and genocide similar to Hitler's,” while Roman Catholic Cardinal Edouard Gagnon confirmed:

The Franciscans... are collecting money for a fake orphanage which is a front for the banks they run ...The building spree around Medjugorje is taking place at the same time that the Croats are constructing armament plants and concentration camps.

Led by the few dozens of brigand Franciscans and suspended clergymen, the “seers” who are now way past their teenage years, live in a lap of luxury hardly expected from those who have daily visitations by Mother of God. Phil Kronzer, who invested much of his time and resources in unmasking the Medjugorje scam after being personally victimized by the architects of the cult, has ignored the death threats issued by Croat Ustashas and made two videos about Medjugorje hoax, “Visions on Demand” and “Divine or Deceived?”

Kronzer shows the “apparitions” are nothing but a web of lies and a malicious fraud, hiding an immense money smuggling operation. Instead of humility and modesty, the alleged visionaries supposedly chosen to receive the innumerable visitations of the Most Pure Mother of God, all six Croatian “seers” are bathing in the opulence and earthly wealth. They own luxurious houses both abroad and in Medjugorje, on what is know as “Millionaires Row”. 'Seer' Ivan Dragicevic, a special advisor to the Hollywood actor Jim Caviezel during his preparation for the role of Christ in Gibson's Passion, just like a Hollywood star, drives a Mercedes and jets around on speaking tours, addressing crowds (through an interpreter) in England and the United States. In 1994, he married a former Miss Massachusetts, Lauren Murphy, in Boston.

The behavior of the Medjugorje clergy involved with the cult is even more scandalous. Though defrocked by their superiors, they continue to officiate at Mass, hold speeches throughout the world and guide the “seers,” controlling millions of dollars of profit the scam brings in yearly. In a tragicomic attempt to shield their handlers from bishop Zanic, the “visionaries” claimed to have received a number of messages in which their “Lady,” having nothing more important to say, repeatedly and resolutely sided with defrocked priests and threatened the disobedient bishop with eternal damnation if he continues opposing the cult.

Emboldened by the millions of followers unwilling or incapable of cutting through the snare of their vulgar lies for decades, the “seers” became brazen enough to demand their bishop should be guided by them, rather than by his own common sense or by his superiors. This has caused a number of Roman Catholics to fear Medjugorje cult is creating a schism within Roman Catholicism by openly disobeying and undermining the authority of its high ranking clergy.

German photographer, Walter Furhoff, who has been to Medjugorje 40 times since 1983 only to discover he was one of many who fell pray to an evil scam, took photos of suspended priest Tomislav Vlasic while he was composing the messages “seers” were to deliver the next day, as another set of miraculous revelations. According to bishop Zanic, Tomislav Vlasic is the creator of Medjugorje, and “has launched the main portion of falsehoods regarding Medjugorje.” The same man established a commune of young Croat men and women from Medjugorje in Parma, Italy, that was supposed to “save the world,” but after being marred by the sexual scandals it was dissolved for fear of jeopardizing the main cash-cow, the Medjugorje scam. Apparently, Vlasic's mission of saving the entire world had to be abandoned, even at the cost of premature apocalypse, in favor of saving the Medjugorje cult.

Another Medjugorje's defrocked clergyman, Jozo Zovko, to whom the teenagers first told their story - richly inspired by whatever they were smoking, is a leader of prayer groups that tied charismatic prayer to “sensitivity training techniques” which break down inhibitions. It is suggested that Zovko used such techniques on the six “visionaries” and controlled both them and the visions for many years. Paul Likodis writes:

The allegations against Fr. Zovko, which have aired publicly on European television documentaries, as well as in books, newspaper, and magazine articles, for persuading women pilgrims to perform oral sex on him at counseling sessions, are just one bundle of similar accusations made against a number of the principal figures in the Medjugorje scam.

On June 15 this year, the successor of Mostar bishop Pavao Zanic, bishop Ratko Peric, issued another stern request to six alleged Medjugorje visionaries to end the charade and stop the blasphemous claims that they are conversing with Mother of God. He reaffirmed Zanic's assertion that “church has not accepted, either as supernatural or as Marian, any of the apparitions” and added:

As the local bishop, I maintain that regarding the events of Medjugorje, on the basis of the investigations and experience gained thus far throughout these last 25 years, the church has not confirmed a single apparition as authentically being the Madonna(...) So-called apparitions, messages, secrets and signs do not strengthen the faith, but rather further convince us that in all of this there is nothing either authentic or established as truthful.

But none of this seems to matter to gullible armies flocking to Medjugorje from every corner of the world (among the cult supporters are even two US congressmen), eager to pay their way to Heavenly Kingdom and practically begging to be deceived. Everything is for sale in the unholy, satanic Medjugorje where, according to 1991 special on ABC Nightline, local Roman Catholic priests refer to the Holy Theotokos as the “Madonna of Financial Reward.”

Seeing how their Croatian neighbors cashed in on smoke-and-mirrors scam, swindling almost entire Roman Catholic world for quarter of a century, it's no wonder Bosnian Muslims came up with equally bizarre proposition: pyramids! In other words, if Bosnian Croats can conjure up “Our Lady” for each busload of rich American tourists, so can Bosnian Muslims unearth an ancient pyramid underneath every hill in their neck of woods. They could even build some now!

Hopefully, once they're done with hugging, kissing, sighing and “feeling the presence,” the pilgrims will have enough cash left to drop by next door, into the Muslim-Land, for a “pyramid” tour and pyramid-related trinkets, lovingly crafted by the mujahedeen butchers, descendants of Tutanbosnicun. If they were capable of uniting in any other way except against Serbs, Bosnian Croats and Muslims could take a cue from Disneyworld and organize colorful little rides that would take tourists from morning coffee with Croatian Lady of Medjugorje to afternoon shish kebab with Bosniac Pharaohs. As for the Serbs... they'll have to keep working for living. Thank God.

(By the way, it's nice to know Croats and Bosnian Muslims are this honest, honorable and trustworthy in time of peace and calm. One has to wonder about the type of behavior and kind of lies they would stoop to in times of crisis, during the war, when manipulating the public opinion, lying, scheming and conniving to win the public over can also pay off handsomely. Especially if, later on, they get to sue the Serbs for hefty restitutions, reaching billions of dollars...)