Medjugorje: The First Days

By James Mulligan

An illustrated account of the first days of the apparitions in Medjugorje. The basis of this account of the first days of the claimed apparitions at Medjugorje is the transcription of the translation from Croatian of twenty-two tape-recorded interviews/on-the-spot commentaries with the alleged visionaries. All the recordings were completed within the first seven days of the alleged apparitions and provide invaluable source material.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483598512

Book preview

Church.

Chapter 1

Medjugorje in time and place

Medjugorje is a village in the extreme western part of Bosnia-Hercegovina just south of Mostar. The name Medjugorje means ‘Between the Mountains’. The parish/village is a grouping of five hamlets: Medjugorje itself [now expanded beyond recognition since the beginning of the apparitions], Bijakovići, Vionica, Miletina and Šurmanci. Although located in the state of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Medjugorje is populated by Croatians. Christianity was well established in the region before the end of the seventh century.

In the middle ages the Franciscan Order came on pastoral work and the Franciscans have been in sterling service in the region ever since – not least during the four centuries of domination by the Ottoman Empire and consequently Islam. The Turkish domination ended in 1878 when this area became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a new era of religious freedom for the Croatians began. The parish of Medjugorje was founded in 1892 and administered by the Franciscans. Following the traumas of the Second World War the politics of the region changed again with Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina falling under the Communist rule of the artificial state of Yugoslavia. The holding together of the Catholic faith under the harsh atheistic Communist state in Croatia and Western Hercegovina was something heroic.

Mass celebrated at the outside altar of St James’ church, Medjugorje in the 1930s

A foreshadowing of the Medjugorje apparitions?

Years before the drama of Medjugorje began it seems intimations of the extraordinary events-to-be in Medjugorje had been around. This is particularly indicated in the construction of a huge concrete cross on the larger of the two hills overlooking the hamlets. Originally named Šipovac (Rosehip Hill), its name was changed to Križevac (Hill of the Cross) after the erection of a large reinforced-concrete crucifix there in 1933. The driving force behind the construction of the cross on Križevac was the then parish priest of Medjugorje, Fr Bernardin Smoljan, a priest of determination and tenacity, who enthused and cajoled his parishioners into the awesome task of carrying stones, steel, cement and wood up the rocky, thorn-strewn 1,500ft high hill to erect the impressive 30ft high cross on the summit to commemorate the 1900th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Apparently the women of the village responded initially more enthusiastically than the men!

Mountain goat on Križevac

Fr Bernardin Smoljan

… he was murdered by the Communists at Mostar in 1945

The cross was completed early in 1934 and the first Mass offered on Križevac on March 15th, 1934. The following is written on the cross:

TO JESUS CHRIST, THE REDEEMER OF THE HUMAN RACE,

AS A SIGN OF OUR FAITH, LOVE AND HOPE

IN MEMORY OF THE 1900th ANNIVERSARY OF THE PASSION OF JESUS

Fr Grgo Vasilj who offered the first Mass on Križevac. He, like Fr Bernardin Smoljan, was also

murdered by the Communists in Mostar in 1945

The first Mass on Križevac, celebrated on March 15th, 1934. Our Lady told the visionaries that the cross on Križevac was in God’s plan for Medjugorje.

Medjugorje parishioners photographed at the cross on Križevac in 1937

Medjugorje parishioners photographed at the cross on Križevac in the 1970s

Medjugorje Tambourine Band at the cross on Križevac in 1976

Amost every able-bodied person in the parish climbed the hill on the day of consecration and of this first Mass, which was celebrated at the foot of the cross by Fr Grgo Vasilj. Since then it has become a tradition to celebrate Holy Mass at the base of the cross on the first Sunday after September 8th, the Sunday dedicated to celebrating the Exaltation of the Cross. One of the consequent blessings Medjugorje villagers believe bestowed was that the devastating hailstorms, which hitherto frequently destroyed the vineyard harvests, ceased completely.

Parishioners at the Exaltation of the Cross Sunday Mass on Križevac in the 1960s

Also around this time in the 1930s an old lady named Marićiuša, who tended sheep on the hillsides, made predictions of a spectacular future for Medjugorje. She spoke of Our Lady appearing, a ‘white army coming’, and of great changes – but nobody took her seriously. Years later, in the mid-1990s at the end of the dreadful ‘Homeland War’, when United Nations observers dressed in white and driving white army vehicles became regularly seen in Medjugorje, some locals asked themselves: Is this the white army that old Marićiuša talked of years ago?

Mate Šego

Someone else with a reputation for being something of a prophet was Mate Šego who was born in 1901 and lived all his life in the hamlet of Bijakovići. An illiterate man who, like so many, struggled to bring up his family with the produce from the stony terrain he repeated again and again to anyone who would listen his predictions that Medjugorje would become a very important place one day, with people from all nationalities coming to pray in the church – the new church that would be built – and a church that would not be able to accommodate them all, so vast would be the crowds. My Gospa will come – blessed are those who believe and remain in prayer. I’m telling you this now! I will not see any of this but you children, you will! (Mate died in 1979) There will be lots of buildings not like the houses we have nowadays - some of the buildings will be huge. Our folks will sell their land to foreigners who will build hotels. Medjugorje and the surrounding hills will be a holy place. There will be so many people on our Crnica Hill you won’t be able to sleep at night. They will come for my Gospa! Be kind and hospitable to those who come here and all will go well for you.

Well, Mate, whether by accident or design, seems to have got some things right – and pretty quickly. Just one example: a nun was in Medjugorje from the 10th to the 12th of August 1981 – less than two months after the apparitions began. She slept two nights in the visionary Marija Pavlović’s house, immediately below Crnica. She describes: "I was often awakened at night by the songs Mary, Oh Mary, how beautiful you are… or Hear us, Mother… Christ, in Your Name, or other religious songs. I was especially glad to hear young men sing: Mother of God, listen to our voice, give us holy priests to lead us to heaven. All during the night the pilgrims climbed the hill to the place of apparitions."

However, an intriguing prediction of Mate’s has still to be realised. He predicted that drought-prone Medugorje, where water shortages have always been a frustrating problem, would one day have so much water that there would be a large lake with boats moored along the rocks!

Among Fr Bernardin Smoljan’s other plans had been a project to build a new church, because the existing one was much damaged by subsidence, but in the dire poverty of the 1930s this was impossible and it would be the late Sixties before a new church was consecrated in Medjugorje. When in 1969 the new church was completed it was much too large for local needs and villagers began to wonder why they had built such a large church.

The old church in Medjugorje completed in 1897 after the creation of the parish in 1892.

It became damaged beyond repair by subsidence.

The new church in Medjugorje consecrated on January 19th 1969

From the beginning a strange premonition seemed to exist in a painting that was displayed in the new church choir loft. Painted in 1974 by a self-taught artist, Vlado Falak, from Šurmanci, it depicted Our Lady in the skies, hands outstretched protectively, above Križevac, with the new church in the left of the picture.

Naïve painting by Vlado Falak completed in 1974 showing Our Lady in the skies above Križevac.

A pre-figuring of the apparitions?

Pictorial glimpses of life in Medjugorje in the 1960s

Perhaps no decade was more important in the keeping of the faith in Medjugorje than the 1960s.

Duck for dinner… a successful morning’s duck-shooting

Anica Kozina and her sister in law, Iva Kozina, coming from vineyard

Tobacco plantation

Overcrowded wheelbarrow

One of the first radios in Medjugorje

Villagers listening to a football game on radio 1966

Kozina’s street in the heart of Medjugorje in the winter 1966

Medjugorje soccer football team 1967

Delights of the rural way of life 1966

Villagers gather on the newly constructed bridge near the Post Office

All the family joins in the work of preparing the tobacco leaves

Old Saint James’ church, Medjugorje, western side main entrance 1966

The bell tower of the old church of St James

The outside altar of the old church of St James …

built in 1931 and in use throughout the 1960s

Funeral procession through the fields to Junčuša Cemetery, Medjugorje in the mid-Sixties

The construction of the new parish church of St James begins

Construction of the new church well under way.

The construction of the new church nears completion. Photo taken on the Feast of Saint James 1963

Horses, cart and passengers

‘Hey Mr. Tambourine Man’ … Medjugorje Tambourine Band 1959/60

Medjugorje … into the 1970s and into the 1980s

Tending the sheep

Work in the Medjugorje vineyards

Tobacco was a major crop in the Medjugorje

region up until the 1990s

Ancient Bogomil tombs near Medjugorje

frequently visted by historians

Many of the stone-built farmhouses in Medjugorje were falling into dilapidation by the 1980s

Work in the fields in the mid-1970s

The Medjugorje wilderness … outstanding natural beauty

The cross on Križevac has dominated the village since 1934

The parish church of St James, Medjugorje in 1981

Until the 1980s horses and donkeys were used on the majority of Medjugorje farms

Chapter 2

The mystery of the rosary beads found on the tractor trailer

Only two months or so before 24th June 1981 something strange happened in Medjugorje. Vicka Ivanković’s (the oldest of the Medjugorje visionaries) younger brother found on the family’s farm tractor trailer two sets of rosary beads. On one set of rosary beads was a quite beautifully carved crucifix depicting all fourteen stations of the Stations of the Cross.

The mystery rosary beads

Vicka driving the tractor on which were found the two sets of rosary beads

Vicka with her mother and brothers

Franjo, youngest of Vicka’s four sisters and three brothers, relates that at six o’clock one morning in April 1981 he was getting ready to go out with their little tractor and trailer to collect some wood: As I was putting all the tools we needed in the trailer I spotted two sets of rosary beads. I picked up the rosary beads and brought them to my mother and grandmother. As I gave them the beads I made a joke saying that this must be the Gospa saying you must pray more. We checked with all the neighbours but nobody claimed the beads. Some weeks after the apparitions began, Zlata, my mother, asked Vicka to ask the Gospa about the rosary beads. Vicka asked and the Gospa said that the rosaries were a special gift from her to our family.

The crucifix on the larger set of rosary beads

The two sets of the mysteriously appeared rosary beads

Chapter 3

Wednesday 24th June 1981

The first apparition

The bleak mountainous terrain of Western Hercegovina

In Medjugorje on the morning of Wednesday 24th June 1981, the Feast Day of John the Baptist, the dawn came loud over the mountains of Western Hercegovina - booming, cracking, reverberating peals of thunder so loud that some early-morning consternation stirred amongst villagers well-used to violent electrical storms. Then the rain came and it came down hard; driving and sheeting, sweeping, streaming floods along the roughly finished network of roads and dirt tracks crisscrossing the five hamlets of Medjugorje, Bijakovići, Vionica, Miletina and Šurmanci that make up the parish of Medjugorje. But by late morning, in the overpowering June heat, all trace of the storm had gone. In the vine and tobacco plantations the surface of the red earth had dried out again to a fine dust and, overlooking the village, the rocky, patchily wooded bramble and scrub-covered hills of Crnica and Križevac shimmered through heat hazes under an unrelenting sun.

Two Holy Masses were celebrated in the morning, one at 8 a.m. and the main one at 11 a.m. As it was a feast day there was no work in the fields. On such occasions of time out as this many young people from the hamlet of Bijakovići went to Perkusa, a place at the base of Crnica. Here there was a little pasture ground and a small wood with hornbeams, thorn bushes and spruces. This was a place where sheep were brought for pasture. Those tending the sheep would bring them early in the morning and gather them again late in the evening.

St James’ church viewed from the fields

Jaka’s, (the visionary Jakov Čolo’s mother) house visited by Mirjana and Ivanka on the first day of the Medjugorje apparitions. The house has now been demolished.

Teenagers loved going to Perkusa because there wouldn’t be anybody to disturb them – like maybe calling them for household chores! Boys used to go to one meadow close by where they had their little playground and they frequently played soccer there. They called that place Jakinovac. It was named after ten year-old Jakov Čolo’s mother Jaka. She was not planting anything on that meadow because the soil was very hard and she would allow the young to play there. Girls used to often just walk up and down the little road that was constructed in 1976 – maybe listening to rock music on a portable radio/cassette player or maybe just chatting.

Around noon seventeen year-old Vida (Vicka) Ivanković got off the bus from Mostar where she had been to summer school revising for a mathematics examination she had to retake. She returned to her family house in the hamlet of Bijakovići at the foot of Crnica. She relaxed, had something to eat, and presently two of her friends, Ivanka Ivanković and Mirjana Dragićević, called by. They reconfirmed plans for the three girls to go for a walk in the evening to Perkusa and Vicka, a little weary from the mathematics, the heat, and the crowded bus journey, lay down and slept. She overslept because when her sister Zdenka woke her up (and for good measure tried to disorientate her by teasing her that she was late for school) it was gone time for her to meet with her two friends. Vicka pulled on her sandals and went off along the narrow, white-dusted road which skirted the hill of Crnica.

Her friends Ivanka and Mirjana were by this time strolling in the early evening quiet towards the slopes of Crnica Hill. Ivanka, a willowy fifteen year-old brunette, was in mourning following the sudden death of her mother, Jagoda, in hospital in nearby Mostar just two months before. The other girl, Mirjana, aged sixteen, a blonde, fashionably-dressed, street-wise teenager from Sarajevo was spending the summer visiting her grandmother, aunt and other relatives in the Medjugorje region. Ivanka wore black because she was in mourning and Mirjana wore a light blue jumpsuit. In her book Salvation of Mankind … a witness of the early events of Medjugorje one of their contemporaries, Draga Ivanković (now Draga Vidovic), describes how as they were passing by her house, her brother invited them to come over and have some cake to celebrate St John’s Day. They promised they would come back a bit later after they visited Mirjana’s aunt, Jaka, mother of Jakov and sister of Mirjana’s father. Ivanka and Mirjana first visited Jaka, spent some time with her and later took the pebble road towards Perkusa.

A glade in the pebble road

As they left Jaka’s house they had told her where they were heading in the case that Vicka came around looking for them. Jaka was Vicka’s godmother. By this stage there was nobody else left in Jakinovac. Just a little before 5.00 p.m. all of the boys went back home because of a basketball match being shown on television. The match was between Cibona and Bosna. Cibona was a team from Zagreb and Bosna was from Sarajevo with both teams having local support in Medjugorje.

Ivanka’s mother Jagoda who died in April 1981

Ivanka’s mother Jagoda in the vineyards

The sheep pasture

The pebble road near Perkusa

At some point just before Vicka caught up with her friends, Ivanka appeared startled and, gazing at a location over on Crnica Hill, called out, Look, the Gospa. (Gospa is the locally-used Croatian word for Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary.) Mirjana, concerned for the fragile emotional state of her friend so soon after her mother’s death, turned, scrutinized Ivanka’s face, and said dismissively: Yeah, right, like Our Lady is there! She has nothing better to do than to come here and watch the two of us! Mirjana was in fact upset with Ivanka because her parents taught her that she was never to trivialise or ridicule the names of Jesus or of Our Lady. Mirjana said in subsequent interviews: Our parents always taught us about our faith. Parents and priests always told us what they thought we needed to know, because they were aware of all of the sufferings people had to endure under Communism for the sake of our faith. Maybe that is the reason (the necessity of the basic teachings alone) why nobody ever told us about the apparitions of Our Lady in the rest of the world.

Mirjana even left Ivanka behind and started walking back towards the village. Ivanka remained for a little but soon re-joined her friend. Almost immediately they met thirteen year-old Milka Pavlović who asked them to help her bring down her family sheep from the sheep pasture at the foot of Crnica where they were grazing. The girls agreed to help, but Ivanka just could not contain herself and begged the other two to return with her to the place on the road from where she claimed she saw Our Lady. Milka and Mirjana assented and, when the trio reached a dip in the road from where there was an unrestricted view, Ivanka pointed up the hill and again called out, The Gospa. Milka and Mirjana looked up in the direction in which their friend was gazing. They also saw Ivanka’s alleged Gospa. What exactly did they see? About a thousand feet distant, up on Crnica, they all saw a beautiful young woman holding a baby. Despite the distance they saw everything in some detail – a beautiful, graceful young girl of about eighteen years of age. Silver-grey long dress and a white head veil. Hair dark brown/black inclined to be curly, just visible falling out under the veil. Dark, beautiful eyelashes. Somewhat sallow-complexioned but rosy-cheeked. Around her head was a crown of twelve stars, which did not seem to be supported in any fashion. The beautiful young woman had a child in her arms which she covered and uncovered with her veil. Her feet were not visible as they were covered by the long dress. She stood on a small, vaporous cloud, which seemed to hover slightly above the ground.

The spot in the road where Ivanka and Mirjana were walking when

they first saw the apparition of Our Lady

Meanwhile Vicka Ivanković approached along the road and, seeing the three girls staring up the hill with such intense fascination, assumed that they were watching a snake or some unusual animal. When Vicka reached them however she was overcome with the feeling that something awesome was happening. It appears she also saw the apparition, but she was so overwhelmed with the sensation of awe that she took to her heels, leaving her sandals on the road, and ran off. Some distance away she stopped, sat down on a boulder by the side of the road and began to weep.

Presently two neighbouring young men, sixteen year-old Ivan Dragićević and twenty year-old Ivan Ivanković, came by. Ivan Dragićević was carrying a bag of apples and offered Vicka one. A distressed Vicka blurted out her tale of the apparition and asked the two boys to accompany her back to the other three girls saying she was afraid