Review of the book by Msgr. Ratko Perić, Bishop Emeritus of Mostar,Virgin Most Prudent: On Medjugorje Out of Love for the Truth
by Marco Corvaglia
The book by H.E. Msgr. Ratko Perić, Virgin Most Prudent: On Medjugorje Out of Love for the Truth (Varaždinske Toplice, Tonimir, 2026), has just been published.
This is an important text, because Perić was Bishop of Mostar for a full 27 years (from 1993 to 2020) and therefore has direct and thorough knowledge of the facts he addresses.
As is well known, Msgr. Perić has always openly expressed his critical position toward Medjugorje. Why has he done so? And why does he continue to do so even today, at eighty-two years of age and six years into retirement due to age limits?
The answer lies in the subtitle: out of love for the truth.
Someone might object that it is easy to feel like a champion of truth, and even easier to call oneself one. There are, however, two criteria that can help distinguish those who genuinely act in truth and for the truth from those who are instead victims of preconceptions, illusions, self-deception — not to mention bad faith.
One fact that few have reflected on (or few have had the courage to admit) is that, from a human standpoint, the aforementioned critical positions have brought Perić nothing but personal hardship, bitterness, and suffering.
He could have basked in glory before the Catholic world as the bishop responsible for the diocese supposedly chosen by God in the contemporary age. He could have sought compromises, like those suggested by the Pontifical Commission of Inquiry (2010-2014) and implemented by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in September 2024 with “The Queen of Peace”: Note About the Spiritual Experience Connected with Medjugorje.
Instead, he chose to be viewed with little sympathy and to be opposed by multitudes of devotees from around the world who believe they perceive the supernatural in the Medjugorje phenomenon.
Can it really be denied that someone who takes positions that run counter to his own personal interests is especially credible and worthy of attention?
The second criterion of truth, the decisive one, brings us straight to the content of the book. The version of events known to the pilgrims who converge on Medjugorje is the apologetic one, and it is constitutively based on partial, incomplete, imprecise, and at times unfounded accounts.
Perić draws on the original documents preserved in the archives of the Curia of Mostar to reconstruct, in particular, the first 5-10 years of the phenomenon, presenting the reader with irrefutable facts and events that clearly illustrate what Medjugorje originally was and who the then-young protagonists were, with their inconsistencies, contradictions, and naive improvisations.
All of this is of paramount importance, because, as I had occasion to conclude in the preface I had the honor of writing (a further preface was entrusted to Professor Father Manfred Hauke), and as I here repeat and emphasize, a tree is recognized not only by its fruits, but also by its roots.