[Update May 7, 2024]

The document will be released on May 17, 2024. The Vatican Press Office has issued the following notice:

Press Conference of 17 May

On Friday 17 May 2024, at 12.00, a press conference will be held in the Holy See Press Office, Sala San Pio X, Via dell’Ospedale 1, to present the new provisions of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for discerning between apparitions and other supernatural phenomena.

The speakers will be:

– His Eminence Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith;

– Msgr. Armando Matteo, secretary for the Doctrinal Section of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The press conference will be livestreamed in the original language on the Vatican News YouTube channel, at https://www.youtube.com/c/VaticanNews.

---

Yesterday, Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register reported that the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), Cardinal Victor Fernandez, is finalizing a new document that will provide updated guidelines for discerning apparitions and other supernatural phenomena. If true, Pentin says that this forthcoming publication will be the first major Vatican statement dealing with miracles and supernatural events since a 2001 document from the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments entitled, “Directory on popular piety and the liturgy: Principles and guidelines.”

Pentin reports that the last general document on discerning the authenticity of apparitions was approved shortly before the death of of Pope St. Paul VI in 1978. It was prepared by the CDF prefect at the time, Cardinal Francis Šeper.

It should be noted that this document, “Norms regarding the manner of proceedings in the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations,” was not initially issued to the public, but was sent out to the bishops as an aid in discerning a pastoral response to reports of such phenomena in their dioceses. Its contents, however, were leaked, translated, published, and shared widely in the years that followed. CDF prefect Cardinal William Levada wrote of these norms in 2011, “Over the years this document has been published in various works treating these matters, in more than one language, without obtaining the prior permission of this Dicastery.” For that reason, Levada decided to “officially” publish the norms in order to help pastors “in their difficult task of discerning presumed apparitions, revelations, messages or, more generally, extraordinary phenomena of presumed supernatural origin.” Levada also expressed hope that the norms would be helpful to theologians and in the life of the Church.

In Levada’s Preliminary Note for the 2011 official publication of the norms, he notes that “Today, more than in the past, news of these apparitions is diffused rapidly among the faithful thanks to the means of information (mass media).” He also observes, that the “modern mentality and the requirements of critical scientific investigation render it more difficult, if not almost impossible, to achieve with the required speed the judgments that in the past concluded the investigation of such matters.” In other words, the Vatican’s typically slow response time has meant that a reported supernatural phenomenon might have already gotten out of hand before Church authorities even began looking into it.

Fernández’s forthcoming document would actually be the second on the subject of apparitions and similar phenomena he has published since being named prefect. In a letter dated October 4, 2023, the cardinal wrote to the bishop of Como, Italy, on the case of an alleged visionary in his diocese. Fernández’s assessment of the messages is generally favorable. He writes:

After carefully studying the situation, I am happy to acknowledge that the whole affair is imbued with positive elements that cannot be disregarded for the spiritual good of the faithful who frequent the Shrine assiduously and with religious intentions.

Furthermore, an examination of the documentation revealed several positive elements, both spiritual and related to the doctrinal message of that experience, as well as of the person involved, whose discretion, seriousness, humility, and sincerity attest in favor of the credibility of his testimony.

Above all, the central message of the entire spiritual experience is to be emphasized: namely, the affirmation of mercy as a fundamental trait of the very identity of the Triune God—a theme that the theology and spirituality of our times strongly reiterate.

Despite this positive assessment, Fernández nevertheless writes in a statement signed by the pope “concerning the non-appropriateness of publishing a pronouncement regarding whether or not the events concerning Mr. Gioacchino Genovese are of a supernatural character.”

In his letter to the bishop of Como, Fernández makes an assertion that I had never heard before: “After 1933, the then Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office never directly intervened again in recognizing the supernatural character or the authenticity of alleged supernatural phenomena.” Checking the (unofficial) list of Vatican-approved apparitions provided by the Miracle Hunter website,[1] the 1933 apparition in Banneux, Belgium is second to last, but it also lists the 1981 apparitions in Kibeho, Rwanda.[2]

In his letter, Fernández essentially gives a green light to continue this devotion in the diocese of Como, but without an official statement from the DDF regarding its supernatural character:

Therefore, this Dicastery does not deem it appropriate to comment on the supernatural character of the above-mentioned spiritual experience. Nevertheless, recognizing certain signs of an action of the Holy Spirit in the midst of this experience, in light of the above, this Dicastery finds no difficulty should Your Eminence decide to continue in the pastoral appreciation of this spiritual experience. In fact, it is hoped that, treasuring the spiritual fruits that have flowed forth in these years, the proclamation of the merciful love of the Trinity may be intensified: the love that stimulates conversion in people and that bestows the grace of abandoning oneself with filial trust.

I am sure that the Lord will bless the efforts undertaken and will give greater strength to grow in understanding the mercy that nourishes God’s actions toward his creatures, as an indispensable trait of God’s very being, which is love, in the Trinitarian unfolding of his truth as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Popular prophets in the internet age

The case in the diocese of Como appears to resemble the type of popular devotion that is traditionally encouraged in the Church. Gioacchino Genovese is a devoutly Catholic husband, father, and music teacher (and an accomplished pianist). By all accounts, he is a humble member of the faithful in the community. He can hardly be bothered to set up a website. A 2012 article in La Stampa says that beginning in 2000, while praying in the local church, he began to sense “through ‘intellectual visions,’ a living presence of the mystery of the Holy Trinity.”

Genovese told no one until 2005, when he asked other people to join him in prayer. Then, from October 2009 through June 2010, something strange would occur: liquid would begin to pour out of the marble of the altar. It was found to be water. Investigations of the altar and the building were unable to explain a natural source for the water. In 2012, the diocesan investigation was completed and the findings were sent to the Vatican. And they waited 11 years for the response.

This isn’t the norm, however, when claims of supernatural occurrences are made. The internet has only increased the rapidity with which unapproved apparitions have spread. Veteran Vatican reporter John Thavis recalled in his book The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age,^[3] the 2010-2015 internet visionary known as “Maria Divine Mercy” (MDM for short) — who offered fairly conventional end-of-the world prophecies until she hit paydirt in 2013 due to her 2012 “prediction” that Pope Benedict would be forced out as pope and replaced by a false prophet.

Following the election of Pope Francis, MDM became an internet sensation. Thavis wrote, “People pored over her supposedly divine messages, which had been translated into thirty-eight languages and now numbered more than eight hundred, along with more than one hundred supernaturally dictated ‘crusade prayers,’ five litanies, and twenty other invocations.” The messages spread like wildfire around the world. The truth of her identity came out in a 2013 blog article, revealing MDM’s true identity as Mary Carberry-McGovern, a middle-aged public relations executive living in Dublin.

Once her identity was known, many reached out to her archdiocese, asking the archbishop to address Maria Divine Mercy. Thavis opined, “In cases like this, the last thing church authorities desire is to create a martyr by acting in a public and punitive manner.” But finally, in April 2014, the archdiocese posted a notice on its website stating, “Archbishop Diarmuid Martin wishes to state that these messages and alleged visions have no ecclesiastical approval and many of the texts are in contradiction with Catholic theology. These messages should not be promoted or made use of within Catholic Church associations.”

Thavis observed, “By now, however, the effort was like trying to stop a runaway train. The prophecies continued unabated, and a few months later her Facebook ‘likes’ had increased to 350,000.” It wasn’t until 2015, when a major story in the Irish Mail linked McGovern-Carberry to MDM and exposed the lucrative business it had become, that the site was shut down.

But her legacy continues. There are countless websites and Facebook groups dedicated to MDM, some of which are still very active. Her messages are still invoked in blog comments from time to time. As recently as 2019, the bishops’ conference of the Philippines had to issue a statement denouncing MDM. A few months later, a Filipino bishop withdrew his endorsement of a lay group with ties to MDM.

In recent months, new alleged apparitions from Catholics opposed to Pope Francis have gained publicity, such as in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, where Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Fuller recently suppressed a group in his territory that was promoting the alleged locutions of one of its members, including a message that Pope Francis was an antipope. Last year, a Franciscan sister in Columbia claimed Pope Benedict XVI appeared to her to tell her that Francis was a false pope and that his death was “a case of slow euthanasia.”

At this site, we have reported on the condemned apparitions and false claims of the French Canadian priest Fr. Michel Rodrigue. We’ve written about Dom Mark Kirby, and extremely troubled figure who claimed to be receiving locutions from God, which were collected in a popular book, In Sinu Jesu. We’ve made reference to the claims on the website Countdown to the Kingdom — a warehouse of the statements of unapproved visionaries and theologically dubious end-times prophecies. All of the publicity for these dime-store prophets has been fueled by the internet.

Say what you want about traditionalism, but at least it’s a small, visible, contained movement with clear objectives and a fairly established range of theological positions. Certainly among them you will find end-times enthusiasts and apparition-chasers. Also, thanks to the anonymity of the internet, anyone can choose a Latin screen name and use a picture of Leo XIII as their avatar to fight over the second Eucharistic Prayer with others on social media. But the size of this movement pales in comparison to the number of everyday pewsitters in ordinary parishes who are taken in by seers and prophets who are not sanctioned by the Church and who wield enormous influence over the many Catholics who buy their books, watch their videos, and attend their speaking events.

I don’t know what Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernández plan to say about discerning the truth about claims of supernatural phenomena, but they have an enormous mess on their hands that the Church has hardly begun to address.

Notes:

[1] Excluding Kibeho (1981), it seems Fernández’s 1933 cutoff is for the year of the apparition, not the year of approval.

[2] Looking more closely into the apparitions at Kibeho, it seems that Bishop’s declaration of approval was published by the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, in June 2001, indicating “Vatican approval” in a sense, but this approval was not declared by the CDF.

[3] Thavis, John. The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age (p. 237-240). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

---

Image: Vatican Media.