The Miracle Detective by Randall Sullivan

Author:Randall Sullivan [Sullivan, Randall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2007-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

By 1990, the strangest and perhaps most dubious quality of the apparitions in Medjugorje, at least in the opinion of those assigned to investigate them, was how long they had gone on. During the past nine years, more than three thousand apparitions had been reported by the six Bosnian Croat seers, compared to a total of twenty-four at Lourdes and Fátima combined. Yet, among the priests of the parish, there was a sense of constant change and continuous adaptation. The Franciscans, for example, had consented to at least one of the decrees issued by Bishop Žanić at the open-air Mass in 1987, promising that the seers no longer would meet in the rectory for their daily apparitions. Instead, the group gathered in the choir loft of St. James’s each afternoon before evening Mass (no one could prevent the children from coming to church to pray, the friars explained). Nearly everyone in Medjugorje agreed that what was intended by the bishop as a punishment had turned out to be a great improvement: The crowds of pilgrims who once clamored for admission to the tiny apparition room now sat in church and prayed the Rosary.

It was during this period that villagers and visitors alike began to remark upon the change in Vicka. The once husky farm girl had taken on a distinctly emaciated look; “gaunt” and “fragile” were the words most often used to describe her. Even more striking was that the vivacious and outspoken young woman had become increasingly deliberate—at times even labored—in both movement and manner, climbing the stairs to the choir loft in short, mincing steps, then speaking in what many disappointed observers called a monotone. Vicka had dropped out of the Textile School in Mostar, and was reported to once again be working with her family in the fields. However, the young woman’s neighbors said they rarely saw her outdoors anymore.

It was her confessor, Father Bubalo, who eventually revealed that Vicka had been suffering terrible headaches and frequent blackouts, falling into a state of unconsciousness for hours at a time. “Comatose” was the word used by those who attempted, unsuccessfully, to wake her. Early in 1988, tearful family members reported that she was unconscious for as many as sixteen hours a day, often waking early each evening just before her apparition, then afterwards lapsing at once back into her coma. During her increasingly abbreviated waking periods, Vicka would offer no explanation for her condition. When her mother pleaded with her to ask the Virgin for a healing, Vicka only shook her head and said, “Many souls benefit from this.” Finally, Vicka confided to several priests (among them the pope’s confidant, Archbishop Hnilica) that her illness was part of an “assignment” she had accepted from the Virgin. Though she would not divulge the nature of her duty, she did say that she would be required to make certain sacrifices; among these would be a period of fifty days without an apparition.

For the first time since June 1981, Vicka’s neighbors whispered that she was possessed.

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