Rome Newsroom, May 14, 2024 / 13:52 pm
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández will unveil guidelines for discerning Marian apparitions and other supernatural phenomena on Friday, but it is not the first time that the Vatican’s doctrine office has issued a directive for how the Church should respond to news of an alleged apparition.
Fifty years ago officials from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith identified how the emergence of mass media had created an environment in which news of an alleged apparition could spread rapidly and quickly draw larger crowds than in past centuries thanks to the ease of modern travel.
Officials from the congregation met to discuss problems that could come up in examining apparitions in November 1974 and agreed on a procedure for Church authorities to follow in the case of a reported apparition.
The Vatican’s doctrine office made these norms public with the approval of Pope Paul VI in 1978, just three years before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was named the prefect of the congregation.
Credit: Source link
