Supernatural events like visions of the Virgin Mary and statues weeping tears of blood have for centuries stirred the faithful — and controversy for the Catholic Church.
In the age of social media, unverified claims can spread rapidly around the globe, so on Friday the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued new guidelines radically reforming its process for evaluating faith-based phenomena.
The document offers detailed instructions and six “prudential conclusions” for bishops who look into such claims. While incredibly rare, some might allow for devotion, while others will be rejected outright.
Stressing that such incidents should be assessed very cautiously, in a document replacing rules issued in 1978, the Vatican’s doctrinal office said that bishops can completely reject an event as supernatural and take steps to ban or limit worship of fake or controversial phenomena.
“It is important not to overlook that sometimes the discernment may also deal with problems, such as delicts, manipulation, damage to the unity of the Church, undue financial gain, and serious doctrinal errors that could cause scandals and undermine the credibility of the Church,” the document says.
While it says “clear procedures” are needed, it also says they are “not intended to control or (even less) stifle” the Holy Spirit.
Approved earlier this month by Pope Francis, the most favorable of the six outcomes would see the church issue a “nihil obstat,” which means a supernatural event would not be contrary to the faith and Catholics could express devotion to it.
While extremely rare, this would leave open the issue of whether the Vatican would formally recognize a phenomenon as “supernatural” while allowing the pontiff to intervene in the process.
But “as a rule” the document states that “potential conclusions do not include the possibility of declaring that the phenomenon under discernment is of supernatural origin — that is, affirming with moral certainty that it originates from a decision willed by God in a direct way,” meaning church authorities will no longer declare whether a vision or stigmata is divinely inspired.
Although it acknowledges the rules issued in 1978 were “no longer adequate,” the document does not say what prompted them to be reviewed.
However, Francis has expressed skepticism about supernatural phenomena, particularly more recent events, including the claims of repeated messages from the Virgin Mary to “seers” at the shrine of Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“I prefer the Madonna as mother, our mother, and not a woman who’s the head of a telegraphic office, who sends a message every day at a certain time,” he told reporters in 2017.
Last year he told Italian broadcaster Rai that apparitions of Mary were “not always real” and that he liked to see her as “pointing to Jesus” rather than drawing attention to herself.
However, he has made it clear that he is devoted to older Marian apparitions approved by the church like Our Lady of Guadalupe, who believers say appeared to an Indigenous man in Mexico in 1531.
When confirmed by church authorities, divine signs can lead to a flourishing of the faith, as was the case for purported apparitions of Mary in the French city of Lourdes and the Portuguese town of Fatima, both of which are incredibly popular pilgrimage destinations.
Other phenomena have nonetheless become sources of scandal.
After the founder of the Army of Mary declared herself the reincarnation of the mother of Christ, the Vatican excommunicated members of the group based in the Canadian province of Quebec.
Elsewhere, in the Philippines, bishops glossed over a 1951 Vatican ruling that purported visions of the Madonna at a Carmelite convent in Lipa, which were said to have been accompanied by a shower of rose petals, had “no sign of supernatural character or origin.”
It came to the decision after the convent prioress confessed to having participated in a “deception” and some of her nuns testified that they had seen deliveries of roses to the convent.