The Vatican has updated its process for evaluating visions of the Virgin Mary and other alleged supernatural phenomena in a new effort to prevent abuses and modernize its approaches amid the proliferation of digital technologies.
The announcement, made during a press conference in Rome last week, represents the first update to the Vatican’s procedures since 1978 and highlights growing concerns about the exploitation of people’s beliefs using technology. However, the new guidelines presented on Friday emphasize caution against making definitive declarations that discount such phenomena unless clear indications of fabrication can be discerned.
The revised norms presented on Friday focus on the moral issues involved in the exploitation of people’s faith through the presentation of alleged supernatural experiences, which can be punishable under canonical law.
Traditionally, the Catholic Church has investigated claims involving various forms of supernatural phenomena, some of which have historically impacted the faith. Among the most famous examples include a series of purported Marian apparitions witnessed by three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal, in 1917.
Decades later, a group of six children in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, claimed to have also seen and communicated with the Virgin Mary over several days in the summer of 1981, during a series of apparitional visions in which she purportedly appeared with the Infant Christ in her arms.
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