Our Lady of Medjugorje and Support for Disobedient Friars

 

 

Without repeating what the so-called “Herzegovin issue” consisted of, let’s just say in a nutshell that for well-known historical reasons, the parishes in Herzegovina (Mostar-Duvno diocese) are partly assigned to diocesan clergy and partly to the Franciscans (Medjugorje falls among the latter). The Franciscan provincial, when transferring friars, gets approval from the diocesan bishop.

 

In 1975, Pope Paul VI had approved the Romanis Pontificibus decree by which, among other things, the following was established:

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6. The parish of Mostar, until now completely entrusted to the pastoral care of the Franciscans, according to the agreement reached between the two parties, will be divided within a year, and in the meantime a cathedral parish will be established in a separate territory, to be entrusted to diocesan clergy.

 

The actual implementation of this measure began a few months prior to the “apparitions” in Medjugorje. At that time, two young friars from Mostar, Ivan Prusina and Ivica Vego, rebelled against the reduction in size of their Franciscan parish and their subsequent relocation.

On April 14, 1981, they were admonished by the vicar general of the Order, Onorio Pontoglio. Fifteen days later they received from the same authority an order to transfer to the Slano friary, but they did not comply.

 

The Medjugorje apologist Father René Laurentin adds:

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As early as July 22, 1981, a decree issued by the vicar and procurator general of the Franciscans, Friar Honorius Pontoglio, special delegate of the Holy See, threatened them with suspension and expulsion from the Franciscan Order if they did not cease their ministry and refused to leave Mostar (Prot. 048614). [...]
On December 29, 1981, the two friars were served with a "final admonition" by the provincial delegate Nikola Radić. [René Laurentin, Message et pédagogie de Marie a Medjugorje, O.E.I.L., Paris 1988, p. 320]

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On December 19, 1981, Ivica Vego (who had been frequenting Medjugorje since late June) sought the Madonna's advice through the "visionary" Vicka Ivanković.
From that moment on (and for two years after), a long series of messages came from the Gospa (the Madonna of Medjugorje), siding with the two rebel friars and against the bishop.

 

On January 29, 1982 a suspension a divinis was issued to Vego and Prusina, reducing them to lay status (as sanctioned by the Vatican Congregation for the Religious), and expulsion from the Franciscan Order (as sanctioned by the General Curia in Rome).

 

The two friars submitted appeals to Vatican authorities but received no response.
In the end, Ivan Prusina alone submitted further appeal to the Apostolic Signatura (the Supreme Vatican Tribunal).

 

Ivica Vego, however, had meanwhile renounced religious life, having fathered a child with a nun from Mostar named Leopolda, whom he met in the official souvenir shop in Medjugorje, where they both served [cf. Laurentin, Dernières nouvelles de Medjugorje, no. 13, OEIL, 1994, p. 49].

 

In 1993, the ruling was issued. Saverio Gaeta writes:

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The ruling [...] acknowledged that the punishment imposed on the two friars was contrary to Canon Law and then declared their expulsion from the Order and demotion to lay status as invalid.
In essence, the claim that the bishop's measure was "excessive" was acknowledged as correct.
[Gaeta, Medjugorje, p. 140]

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A few pages earlier, Saverio Gaeta had also pointed out how, in some of the Gospa's messages, the bishop, who had initiated the disciplinary measures, had been described as “hasty” [cf. ibid., pp. 137-138].

 

In fact, the available documentation refutes both the claim that the messages were limited to accusing the bishop of haste or excess, and the claim that the Apostolic Signatura discredited his handling of the matter.

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The Gospa's messages in support of the friars and against the Bishop

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As a first observation, we see that the “messages” conveyed by Vicka certainly don’t attribute only haste or excessiveness to the bishop: they are harsh to him.

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December 19, 1981:

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I made a request to Our Lady on the problem of Herzegovina, in particular as regards Father Ivica Vego. Our Lady said that for these disorders the more guilty is the Bishop Žanić. Relating to Ivica Vego has said that he is not guilty, but that the bishop has in hand all the power. She said to remain in Mostar and not to leave from there

[Ogledalo Pravde. Biskupski ordinarijat u Mostaru o navodnim ukazanjima i porukama u Međugorju (The Diocesan Curia of Mostar on the Alleged Apparitions and Messages of Medjugorje), Mostar, 2001, p. 75]

January 3, 1982:

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The Bishop does not arrange the situation and therefore he is guilty. And then he will not always be the bishop. I will show the justice in Paradise.
[Ibid., pp. 75-76 and Laurentin, Message et pédagogie de Marie a Medjugorje, p. 304 ]

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April 15, 1982, to rhe rebel friars:

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Do not obey anyone! Do not blame yourselves for anything at all, and, above all, do not go away from Mostar.

[Ogledalo Pravde, p. 77 and Laurentin, Message et pédagogie de Marie a Medjugorje, p. 306].

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At the beginning of 1983, a Slovenian Jesuit, Fr. Radogost Grafenauer, met the visionaries Vicka and Marija. He recorded the conversations and left a copy of the tape to the parish, to Bishop Žanić and to the Episcopal Conference of Zagreb.
Here is a passage of the interview with Vicka:

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Grafenauer: Did you tell the bishop that he is to blame and that those two [Vego and Prusina] are innocent and can perform their priestly duties?
Vicka: Yes, I did.
Grafenauer: Can they hear confessions? Did Our Lady mention this?
Vicka: Yes.
Grafenauer: If Our Lady said this and the Pope says that they cannot…
Vicka: The Pope can say what he wants, I’m telling it as it is [Original: Nek Pope govori, kako ja kazem onak jest].

[Ogledalo Pravde, pp. 22-23]

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Saverio Gaeta writes, commenting on the case at hand:

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Here, as in other instances, Monsignor Laurentin's overall reflection may apply. “These responses regarding an issue that did not concern them belong to the early months of Medjugorje; The visionaries were barely older than children.”
[Gaeta, Medjugorje, p. 139]

 

Actually, Vicka, the one who allegedly received the messages in question, was 17 years old when messages regarding the rebel friars began, and 19 when they ended (apart from little Jakov, the other visionaries were younger than her by approximately one year; two in Ivanka's case).

 

We continue with the quote from Laurentin:

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They naively experienced their first extraordinary, and at the same time, very familiar messages from the Gospa. They conveyed all sorts of questions to Our Lady, with no holding back, and they would do so as a babbling child does to its mother. The Gospa repeatedly reprimanded them for this. It took her several months to make them understand that she was not an employee of the gates of heaven, in charge of satisfying any curiosity, and that the purpose of the apparitions was quite different, as the message was at a much different level. When the visionaries understood this and, through them, those who interviewed them also understood, questions of this kind were no longer asked. This story thus attests to a pedagogical transition that must be considered in all its relativity. The visionaries did not ask about this matter after January of 1984.
[Ibid.]

 

But the problem is not the visionaries' questions. It consists of the Gospa's responses.

 

 

The Transfer Never Invalidated: What the Signatura's Ruling Actually Says

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​Finally, the Apostolic Signature in no way repudiated the actions of Msgr. Zanic, as is well explained by a note ("Biskup se nema za što ispričavati" [The bishop has nothing to apologize for]) written by the vicar general of the Curia of Mostar, Fr. Luka Pavlović, and published in 1996 in Vrhbosna, the Official Bulletin of the Dioceses of the  Sarajevo metropolis, no. 2/1996 (p. 142) and then in Ogledalo Pravde (pp. 81-82). 

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On February 18, 1985, the two friars had filed an appeal in the Vatican with the Congregation for Religious — the same authority that had issued the decree reducing them to the lay state (following the request of the Bishop of Mostar and the issuance of the dismissal decree by the Franciscan Order). As mentioned earlier, this appeal was never acted upon by the authorities.

Fr. Luka Pavlović wrote:

 

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[The Congregation for Religious (which had in the meantime taken the name Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, ed.)] did not respond to the appeal, because it deemed it appropriate to rely on the clause contained in the Decree of Dismissal [issued by the Franciscan Order, ed.], according to which no appeal to the Major Tribunals of the Holy See would be granted.
It trusted this because it interpreted the Pope's decisions regarding dismissal from the Order in the broadest sense. And in this it was wrong. Everyone has the right to a defense (can. 1620, 7). It paid no attention to Friar Ivan's querela nullitatis.

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​As for the intervention of Bishop Žanić and his request for the reduction to the lay state of Ivan Prusina, filed on January 7, 1983, the same note points out the following:

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[In the Signatura's ruling] no dubium whatsoever is raised as to the validity or invalidity of the Bishop's request, but only as to the modus procedendi et decernendi [manner of proceeding and deliberating, ed.] of the Congregation for Religious regarding the Order's Decree.
[...] Bishop Žanić is mentioned several times in the Ruling, and each time his judgment, his opinion, and his complaint are regarded as being within his competence. The Bishop's decisions remain in force regarding the denial of priestly faculties, concerning the pastoral activities of Friar Ivan Prusina in the Diocese both before and after the dismissal, and even after the dismissal was declared illegitimate.​

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No ecclesiastical authority, at any level of judgment, has therefore ever declared the transfer decision made by Msgr. Žanić against the two friars invalid or unfounded. The ruling of the Apostolic Signatura addressed solely a procedural flaw on the part of the Congregation for Religious, leaving the bishop's decision entirely untouched.

Marco Corvaglia

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