The Church is well known for its cautiousness in dealing with “private revelations” as well as the rigorous criteria it must use to authenticate apparitions.

In 20 centuries of Christian life, only 12 other apparitions have been recognised in addition to the one in Lourdes, whereas the overall number of apparitions runs in the hundreds. On that score the congress had nothing new to add. Instead it focused on an ecclesial reading of the manifestations of Our Lady, looking at way to forward in a theology of apparitions.

“With the issue of exorcism, this question is the least studied,” said Fr René Laurentin, one of the great specialists of the field.

In the course of the congress about 30 apparitions of Our Lady on five continents were examined, including those that have been recognised in places like Lourdes and Fatima as well as more recent ones in Kibeho (Rwanda), L'Île-Bouchard and Laus (France), and Međugorje (Bosnia-Herzegovina).

Centred on the Cross

In a report on the status and content of apparitions, Fr Yves-Marie Blanchard, of the Institut Catholique de Paris, defined the criteria of evaluation which, in his opinion, make an apparition authentic. After selecting two of them, he said that an apparition must be “centred on the Cross and the Church.” Even when apparitions are credible, it may take years before the Church authenticates them. This, according to Fr José Jacinto Ferreira de Farias from the Universidade Católica de Lisboa, explains why the apparitions in Fatima were recognised quite late, in 1956, after a process of maturation during which the words and visions the Virgin gave to Sister Lucia were finally understood.

For his part Fr Bernard Sesboué SJ turned to a anthropological reflection regarding the human body, which according to Christian doctrine, is “destined for salvation.”

Starting from the premise that Christ’s Resurrection is an eschatological event, he concluded that “apparitions are pedagogical manifestations adapted to the bodies that have not yet been resurrected.

Thanks to Fathers Miguel Ponce Cuellar, from the Sociedad Mariológica Española, Salvatore Perrella, from the Pontifical Academy, and historian Bernard Peyrous, the assembly was given a fascinating overview of Our Lady’s apparitions from a theological, ecclesial and historical perspective.

“Apparitions belong to the category of freely granted graces,” Father Perrella said. For him there is causal relationship between the Assumption and Mary’s mediation so that it is possible to say “that in a healthy mind, the Virgin reaches everyone across time and space.”

God in history

“Does God speak in history?” asked Father Peyrous. In the brilliant report he delivered after raising the question, he looked at how God ‘speaks’ to his people, not only through apparitions, but also through the creation of new religious communities and the appearance of new saints or new forms of holiness.  For example, he noted the chain of “private revelations” by which God gave rise to the devotion to the Eucharist or the Sacred Heart. Similarly, he mentioned the current of spirituality that runs from Maurice Zundel to Chiara Lubich, via Marthe Robin, Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar, which God inspired in our day and age so as to help human beings probe into the abyss of their kenosis. Undoubtedly, through the Virgin as well as new saints, new mystics and new forms of religious life God acts upon the path of the Church and the world.

During the session partly devoted to the presentation of the monumental Dictionary of Apparitions, Fr René Laurentin made a clear presentation, especially in defence of seers who are too often treated as “oracles,” something which twists reality.

For him it would be a good idea to use encephalograms to scientifically examine ecstasy as a state of consciousness. Such tests would identify its specific nature in relation to other states like sleep, dream, hallucinations or neurosis. For him such a state is coherent and functional and does not degrade a seer’s identity.

The congress ended with a round table centred on the relationship between apparitions and ecumenism. Various Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant participants made qualitatively varying presentations that tended however to complete rather than contradict each other.