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Rules on investigating supernatural events sharpened
By J.Lo
“In certain circumstances not everything is black or white,” catholic Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, leads dicastery, told journalists Vatican sharpened its rules for investigating supernatural events such as visions of Christ or Virgin Mary, acknowledging on Friday overactive imaginations and outright “lying” risked harming fanatics.
New norms allow for more “prudent” interpretation of events that generally avoids declaring them outright supernatural event.
They were published by Holy See’s powerful Dicastery for Doctrine of Faith and approved by Pope Francis.
“Sometimes possible divine reaction mixes with… human thoughts and fantasies,” Fernandez added.
History of Catholic Church is filled with episodes of strange or unexplained phenomena involving religious statues or other objects.
New guidelines come two months after Church said series of widely reported miracles attributed to statuette of the Virgin Mary including making pizza grow in size were false.
New rules provide more guidance to bishops, who until now have been left relatively free to determine authenticity of such visions on case-by-case basis. It is first time they have been updated since 1978.
Underscoring complexity of issue, Vatican has completed only six cases of such alleged supernatural events since 1950, with one taking around “seventy excruciating years,” document said.
New rules call for more collaboration between bishops of individual dioceses concerned and Vatican over such investigations.
Final decisions of bishops should be submitted to dicastery for approval, it said.
Some incidents “at times appear connected to confused human experiences, theologically inaccurate expressions, or interests that are not entirely legitimate,” document noted.
“Bishops might have to deal with “manipulation, damage to unity of the Church, undue financial gain, and serious doctrinal errors that could cause scandals and undermine credibility of the Church,” it added.
But in absence of problems, dioceses will now be able to declare “Nihil Obstat,” indicating there is nothing in the phenomenon contrary to faith and morals.
That falls short of official declaration of its supernatural authenticity, under new rules is generally to be avoided unless pope authorizes it.
Fernandez explained most of the Church’s major pilgrimage sites grew organically over years without official declaration on authenticity of original “miracle.”
In most serious cases, to avoid confusion or scandal, dicastery will ask local bishop to state that belief in phenomenon is not allowed, and explain why.
Faster response by Church is needed because such phenomena are “taking on national and even global proportions” as they spread via internet, dicastery said.
Factors to consider are “possibility of doctrinal errors, oversimplification of the Gospel message, or spread of sectarian mentality,” it said.
Fanatics could be misled by events attributed to divine cause that might in fact be “merely product of someone’s imagination” or those who have “inclination toward lying.”
Fernandez could not comment how many supernatural events were alleged to occur each year, as most were managed by dioceses.
Most recently, Italian diocese of Civita Castellana declared in March that alleged miracles from statuette of Virgin Mary in the town of Trevignano Romano outside Rome were “non-supernatural.”
Self-professed visionary, previously convicted for fraudulent bankruptcy, had said her statuette cried tears of blood and made pizza multiply in size.
Pilgrims flocked to the town after her proclamations, while some donors to charity she founded said they had been duped.
Diocese said affair had shaken faith of many churchgoers.
In April 2023, Vatican created Observatory for Apparitions and Mystical Phenomena Related to Figure of Virgin Mary to help bishops confronted with such cases.
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