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Chapter 3

Miracle or Fraud? — How the Church Decides

Not everything is in fact a miracle. Quite popular are claims of an image of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the saints seen in a light, a shadow, or a discoloration. The most infamous example is the 2004 sale for $10,000 of a grilled-cheese sandwich that bore the likeness of the Virgin Mary. Science classifies such imagery as a form of pareidolia, a false perception of an image due to what is theorized as the mind’s oversensitivity to perceiving patterns. Whereas the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe miraculously “painted” on the tilma of St. Juan Diego in 1531 on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico is perhaps the greatest prodigy in the history of the Church after the time of the Gospels, there is only one instance of a naturally occurring stain resembling the Virgin Mary that has ever been approved by ecclesiastical authorities. On January 17, 1797, in Absam, Austria, a permanent image inexplicably impressed on a glass window was declared miraculous by the local bishop.

An instance of a bleeding host or statue needs to be treated with a different level of attention and intervention than a case of a person who allegedly bleeds from the wounds of Christ. In the case of the Eucharistic miracle, the host is typically confiscated by Church authorities to perform scientific tests that can easily ferret out a hoax from an authentic miracle. In some rare cases, actual human blood or heart muscle has been found to be present with the host.

In cases of the stigmata, by which a person is allegedly joined in suffering with the crucified Christ, blood oozes from the person’s hands, feet, side, and forehead. These persons are kept under close medical observation to see the spontaneity of the bleeding and to ensure that the persons are not self-inflicting the wounds with sharp implements or acid. If there is no scientific explanation for a person’s stigmata, the Church will not publicly declare the authenticity of the occurrence, as it is tantamount to the canonization of a living person in the eyes of some of the faithful. Some of the Church’s greatest saints, such as Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena, have been stigmatics, but the wounds themselves are not a guarantee of holiness.

Those who bear the wounds of Christ are still subject to the same temptations and failings as the rest of us, but when a stigmatic publicly falters, there is the potential for great scandal. One of Catholicism’s great modern saints, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, as mentioned in the last chapter, exhibited these wounds but was censured by the Vatican and prohibited from publicly saying Mass in order to allow Church authorities to assess the many miracles and phenomena that surrounded him.

In the case of incorruptible bodies that are preserved in some state of perfection well beyond the time of death, the former Sacred Congregation of Rites had given official recognition to several preservations as miraculous. In general the Church has been reluctant to use the incorruption of a body as a miracle in a sainthood cause, with the notable exception of St. Andrew Bobola, whose corpse survived rough handling during several translations and still remained perfectly fresh for more than three hundred years.²³

The Vatican is generally very cautious and can be extremely slow to approve miracles of any sort. For example, in 2008 the Church finally gave formal recognition to the 1664 apparitions in Le Laus, France, and the first formal approval of an apparition in the United States came in 2010, when the visions experienced by Belgian farmworker Adele Brise in 1859 in Wisconsin were solemnly approved. In the 1947 case of Bruno Cornacchiola, a poor Italian tram worker who received a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary on his way to assassinate the pope, the Vicariate of Rome approved the cult of the Virgin of Revelation very quickly that same year, but a definitive judgment, either positive or negative in regard to the supernaturality of the vision, has still not been made. With modern communication technologies, more advanced record keeping, and a wider geographical impact of claims of private revelation resulting in larger pastoral concerns, the Church has moved more swiftly in recent times.

In the early Church, there were no scientific inquiries into the events in question. Not only were there no brain-wave monitors or video cameras to track eye movement during supposed visions or tests to determine whether the blood or tears on a weeping statue were human, no formal investigation of any sort was universally required in the discernment of the miraculous claims. As part of the process, the faithful might gather to pray at the site, and the parish priest, or even better, a bishop could be involved, but it wasn’t the norm. Trustworthy testimony and a miracle were typically the main elements that built a case for visions or other events to be accepted as authentic. In a form of popular approval throughout Europe, shrines arose, including the Slipper Chapel in Walsingham, England, where Catholics and Anglicans alike commemorate the apparitions experienced by a noblewoman in 1061, and, as was mentioned earlier, Our Lady of the Pilar Basilica in Spain, legendarily the site of history’s first Marian apparition experienced by St. James in A.D. 40 while Mary was still alive.

It is not uncommon in early stories of miraculous visions or holy images for a formula to be present in one of several variations: Our Lady appears to one or more people (or a miraculous statue is discovered), she requests that the visionary tells the town to return to a life of practicing the Faith, a miracle (most typically healing) is given to prove the authenticity of the Virgin’s presence, and finally she requests that a shrine be built in commemoration. The location of the requested shrine is often indicated symbolically — the collected statue might miraculously return overnight three times to the spot where it was discovered. This was the case in the foundational legend of the Santuario de Chimayó in New Mexico, known as the Lourdes of the Southwest and home to the healing dirt that has been a part of thousands of cures. The location for the shrine was chosen because a supernatural light was said to have shone on a crucifix that was unearthed and taken to the local parish church some miles away. Three times it miraculously returned to its original discovery spot, giving the faithful confidence to build a shrine there.

In other such legends, the image became so heavy that it could not be moved. In the year 641, villagers of Soviore, Italy, buried their statue of the Madonna and fled toward the Mediterranean escaping the advancing Lombard hordes. A hundred years later, on July 7, 740, the parish priest was hunting at dawn, when he noticed a dove fly into a hole. Unsuccessful at uncovering the spot, he returned the next day with three helpers with shovels, and they unearthed a wooden statue. When the priest tried to carry it home, it was too heavy to move, so he left it there. On the following day, people found that the statue had moved to the top of a nearby chestnut tree. When it repeatedly returned after being moved, the villagers built a chapel at that spot.

The most famous legend of a weight-gaining holy icon is that of the wonder-working Polish image of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Hussite raiders looted the castle where the icon was housed, but during the getaway the image became so heavy that the horses could no longer drag the cart carrying the goods. The thieves removed the image and slashed it with a sword in frustration before tossing the icon into a ravine. The iconic scar present in every reproduction of the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora faithfully reproduces the scar on the face of the original image. Eventually, however, miracles and revelations perhaps intended for the universal Church were no longer evaluated by a parish priest or a community of the faithful, and more standard guidelines were drawn up. The revelations accorded to mystic St. Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden were considered at the Councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basel (1431–1449). She had received in ecstasy hundreds of infused locutions relating to a wide range of topics, including tips for everyday living, calls for reform in the Church and in Sweden, and even the Crusades. She dictated her messages in Swedish to two spiritual directors and a bishop, who recorded them in Latin. Because of her high profile and contact with the popes on political matters, her revelations were treated with special care and attention.²⁴

The proliferation of alleged messages from myriad seers inspired greater Church involvement in discerning the words of mystics. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the faithful were growing anxious over the increase in itinerant prophets with messages of doom.²⁵ The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517), called by Pope Julius, reserved the approval of new prophecies and revelations to the Holy See. Following the explosive and scandalous exposing as a demonic fraud the famed Spanish mystic Sr. Magdalena de la Cruz in 1544, the Council of Trent sought to return investigations to the local level and authorized bishops to investigate and approve such phenomena before public worship could take place.

As established in the Council of Trent, the local bishop is the first and main authority in apparition cases, which can be defined as instances of private revelation. From the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent:

And that these things may be the more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains, that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual image, in any place, or church, howsoever exempted, except that image have been approved of by the bishop: also, that no new miracles are to be acknowledged, or new relics recognized, unless the said bishop has taken cognizance and approved thereof; who, as soon as he has obtained some certain information in regard to these matters, shall, after having taken the advice of theologians, and of other pious men, act therein as he shall judge to be consonant with truth and piety. But if any doubtful, or difficult abuse has to be extirpated; or, in fine, if any more grave question shall arise touching these matters, the bishop, before deciding the controversy, shall await the sentence of the metropolitan and of the bishops of the province, in a provincial Council; yet so, that nothing new, or that previously has not been usual in the Church, shall be resolved on, without having first consulted the most holy Roman Pontiff.²⁶

In the decades following the council, the Church became increasingly vigilant about protecting the faithful against alleged private revelation and, in general, against the expression of ideas deemed dangerous. With the development and popularity of the printing press, many anti-Catholic documents and reformed versions of the Bible became widely available. The Catholic Church sought to protect the faithful from publications deemed heretical, anti-clerical, or lascivious and created a list known as the Index of Forbidden Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) in 1559. In addition to books deemed dangerous in science and philosophy, writings on unapproved private revelation would make the list. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V established the Roman Inquisition (also known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition) and fourteen other congregations in the Roman Curia.

Prospero Lambertini (1675–1758), the future Benedict XIV, provided several rules for discernment of private revelations and the miracles needed for the canonization of saints in De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione in 1740. Such events must present themselves to human reason as being truly extraordinary and beyond the scope of natural causes. He answered the question of whether the incorruptible corpses of saints could be used as evidence of sainthood, insisting that the cases considered miraculous had to be bodies close to perfectly preserved over the course of many years.²⁷

In the twentieth century, the Church continued its efforts to contain the wide dissemination of information on alleged phenomena and reinforced the bishop’s role as judge of the authenticity of private revelation. The Code of Canon Law of 1917 (canon 1399, no. 5) forbade the publication of anything about “new apparitions, revelations, visions, prophecies, and miracles” without the local bishop’s approbation. The local ordinary is to consult someone (known as the censor librorum) whom he considers competent to give the doctrinal content of the publication the stamp of nihil obstat (“nothing forbids”), at which point the local ordinary grants the mark of imprimatur (“let it be printed”).

On December 7, 1965, following Pope Paul VI’s motu proprio Integrae servandae reconstituting the Holy Office as the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and effectively dropping the Index of Forbidden Books from being overseen by any congregation, a CDF notification of June 14, 1966, published in the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano,²⁸ announced that, while the Index maintained its moral force in teaching Christians to avoid those writings that could endanger faith and morals, it no longer had the force of Church law and its repercussions.

In 1966, Paul VI, implementing Vatican II’s statement on the right of the mass media to information, lifted the requirement that all writings about private revelation need ecclesiastical approval before publication, repealing canons 1399 and 2318 from the Code of Canon Law of 1917. With this change and the disappearance of the Index, the floodgates for claims of private revelation had been opened. Fr. René Laurentin, the world’s foremost Mariologist, acknowledged the change in apparition trends by labeling the rise “an explosion of the supernatural” and expressed concern that the reports of apparitions had become frequent, “numerous and even disturbing.”²⁹ He found this to be such a paradigm shift that he divided the almost 2,500 apparitions catalogued in his comprehensive work, Dictionary of the Apparitions of the Virgin Mary, into two parts: (1) apparitions in Christian history before 1966 and (2) those occurring after.

The most recent CDF document and the current standard that lays out the guidelines for the judgment of apparition claims is the Normae Congregationis de Modo Procedendi in Diudicandis Praesumptis Apparitionibus ac Revelationibus (Norms of the Congregation for Proceeding in Judging Alleged Apparitions and Revelations), approved by Pope Paul VI on February 27, 1978, and written sub secreto in Latin for the eyes of bishops alone. The document was later publicly produced in translations released to the bishops. With these official translations having been leaked to the Internet and other unofficial translations abounding online, the Vatican formally released five translations of the document more than two decades later on May 24, 2012, admitting knowledge of its previous availability in the introduction by William Cardinal Levada.³⁰ The purpose of the document, as indicated by Levada in his introduction, is to

aid the Pastors of the Catholic Church in their difficult task of discerning presumed apparitions, revelations, messages or, more generally, extraordinary phenomena of presumed supernatural origin…. [May it also] be useful to theologians and experts in this field of the lived experience of the Church, whose delicacy requires an evermore thorough consideration.

The Normae Congregationis sets out the procedures to be followed in investigating the authenticity of extraordinary claims. The document clarifies the role of Church officials in investigating the authenticity of claims of private revelation. There are four ways the competent ecclesiastical authority is to act with respect to a claim of private revelation. The authority can or must:

1. Inform himself without delay and keep vigilance over the claim.

2. Promote some form of cult/devotion at the request of the faithful if the above negative and positive criteria do not prohibit it.

3. Intervene on his own initiative, especially in grave circumstances.

4. Refrain from intervening in doubtful cases, but remain vigilant.

Bishops evaluate evidence of private revelation according to these guidelines:

1. The facts in the case are free of error.

2. The person(s) receiving the messages is/are psychologically balanced, honest, moral, sincere, and respectful of Church authority.

3. Doctrinal errors are not attributed to God, the Virgin Mary, or to a saint.

4. Theological and spiritual doctrines presented are free of error.

5. Moneymaking is not a motive involved in the events.

6. Healthy religious devotion and spiritual fruits result, with no evidence of collective hysteria.

St. Philip Neri (1515–1595) was often brought in by bishops to give his opinion on the authenticity of mystics. With a careful eye on obedience and humility, he was able to ferret out false mystics with great success. One day in 1560, the cardinals were discerning about a nun who was having visions. Since they sought his opinion, Philip went to see the young sister. He kindly said to her, “Sister, I didn’t want to see you; I wanted to see the saint.” The nun answered, “But I am the saint!” and Philip was able to report confidently to the cardinals that her visions were not from God.³¹

Judgment can find that a revelation shows all the signs of being an authentic supernatural intervention from heaven, that it is clearly not miraculous, or that there are not sufficient signs to establish whether the alleged apparition is authentic.

If a vision of the Virgin Mary, for example, is recognized by the bishop, it means that the associated message is not contrary to faith and morals and that Mary can be venerated in a special way at the site. Pope Benedict XVI commented on private revelation in his 2010 apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini:

Ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation essentially means that its message contains nothing contrary to faith and morals. It is licit to make it public and the faithful are authorized to give to it their prudent adhesion. A private revelation can introduce new emphases, give rise to new forms of piety, or deepen older ones. It can have a certain prophetic character (cf. 1 Th 5:19–21) and can be a valuable aid for better understanding and living the Gospel at a certain time; consequently it should not be treated lightly. It is a help which is proffered, but its use is not obligatory. (no. 14)

According to Tradition, the “competent authority” refers to the local ordinary, who is expected to fulfill the duties and obligations that fall to him. Although the diocesan bishop possesses the right to initiate an investigation, that country’s national conference of bishops can subsequently intervene at his request or at the request of a qualified group of faithful not “motivated by suspect reasons.” If necessary, the Vatican can then also intervene if the situation involves the Church at large or if discernment requires it. The CDF judges the manner in which the local ordinary conducted his investigation and decides whether it is necessary to initiate a new examination. It is the right and responsibility of local bishops to investigate and make judgments about alleged apparitions, and ordinarily the Vatican does not become involved in the process. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has an obligation of “guidance and vigilance.”

In an essay for Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis (PAMI) on the topic of Normae Congregationis, Msgr. Charles Scicluna, promoter of justice for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, notes that once a decision of the CDF is given, it cannot be overturned by a lower authority, as it is of “undisputed hierarchical authority.”³²

A classic modern example of the progression in the levels of intervening authority is the controversial Medjugorje case, in which the famed apparition phenomenon that began in 1981 was first investigated and discouraged by the local ordinary, was later judged to be “not established as supernatural” by the 1991 Zadar Commission of the Yugoslavian bishops, and then was re-examined by a Vatican commission formed on March 26, 2010. (Note: At the time of the publication of this book, the results of the commission were unknown.)

Church officials are called to assess the phenomenon and the people who report them, looking for evidence of authenticity. Typically, if the situation merits it, the bishop will assemble a commission of experts in various disciplines to create a report to advise him on how to render judgment. These experts may come from a variety of fields and are usually theologians, psychologists, psychiatrists, Mariologists, or anthropologists.

Next they are to study any messages that are associated with the extraordinary reports, to ascertain whether they conform with Church teaching.

The third question raised by the document appraises the pastoral implications of the phenomena by studying the fruits of the reported apparitions. Miraculous physical healings, conversions, vocations, and a return to the sacraments are considered to be good fruits.

In September of 1888 at Castelpetroso, Italy, Fabiana Cecchino and Serafina Giovanna Valentino, both in their thirties, had a vision of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows. After some time, news of the occurrence reached Msgr. Macarone-Palmieri, bishop of the Diocese of Bojano, where Castelpetroso is located. He was called to Rome for the business of his diocese, and while he was there, he updated the Holy Father on what was going on at Castelpetroso, adding that he would have liked the apparitions to have been confirmed by some clear sign. The pope asked if he did not think the apparitions in themselves were signs and requested that the bishop return to Castelpetroso and provide a new report. The bishop did as he had been directed and went back to Castelpetroso, and with the archpriest of Bojano, he saw the Virgin three times.

Not all approvals are so easy. For the most recent episcopal approval of an apparition, and the only one in the history of the United States, Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay, Wisconsin, initiated an investigation in 2009 in which a team of three renowned Mariologists examined the merits of the 1859 claims of Adele Brise, a Belgian farmworker who reported that she saw the Virgin Mary on three occasions and began to spread Our Lady’s messages of conversion and catechesis. The team of investigators pored over thousands of pages of historical documents and accounts of miraculous cures and deep conversions. Some of the miracle accounts related to the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871 and how the shrine was miraculously spared. In what was the most devastating fire in the history of the United States, much of the eastern side of Wisconsin became engulfed in flames. In the small town of Robinsonville (now Champion), locals gathered at the shrine of Our Lady of Good Help to pray and participate in a procession and prayers to the Virgin Mary that they might be spared as the fire raged around them. In miraculous fashion, the shrine and its property were the only land not torched for as far as the eye could see; even the white picket fence surrounding the small plot of land had been charred. After the commission concluded, Ricken decided that there was enough evidence to declare with confidence that this supernatural event was “worthy of belief” and contained nothing contrary to the teachings of the Church. He made the historic announcement of approval on December 8, 2010, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help:

I declare with moral certainty and in accord with the norms of the Church that the events, apparitions and locutions given to Adele Brise in October of 1859 do exhibit the substance of supernatural character, and I do hereby approve these apparitions as worthy of belief (although not obligatory) by the Christian faithful.³³

Unlike most modern apparition investigations, Ricken did not have the benefit of being able to interview the visionary or talk to firsthand witnesses. In the case of the famed apparition claims at Medjugorje, the Vatican investigative commission, beginning on March 26, 2010, had a different set of challenges. The local bishop already had given a negative judgment and repeatedly made known his displeasure with the events in question, and the national conference of bishops had intervened on top of that, issuing its 1991 Zadar Declaration:

On the bas[is] of studies made so far, it cannot be affirmed Non constat de supernaturalitate [not established as supernatural] that these matters concern supernatural apparitions or revelations.

The investigative commission, headed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar general emeritus for the Diocese of Rome, and composed of fifteen members of various disciplines, had to review the thousands of messages attributed to the Virgin and collected over thirty years and to interview all the seers. In the meantime, the Catholic world (with its thirty million pilgrimages made to the small town in Bosnia-Herzegovina) awaited an answer with bated breath. In stark contrast, the investigation into the Wisconsin apparitions was carried out under the radar with even some locals unaware of the reported prodigious events at the shrine a century and a half earlier.

At the time of the Medjugorje investigation, the apparition reports were still occurring. This would typically preclude the CDF from issuing an outright positive judgment out of pastoral concern that if the Church publicly favored the supernaturality of the events and they later turned out to be a hoax, the Church’s authority in these matters would be ridiculed, compromised, and disregarded in general and specifically on future judgments of miraculous claims. In a few select cases in history, such as the Church-approved apparitions in Betania (Venezuela), Kibeho (Rwanda), and Itapiranga (Brazil), the local bishop issued positive statements while the events were still going on, bracketing the years in question, saying that the events during a specific period were worthy of belief.

There are three traditional categories of apparition judgments that relate most importantly to the supernatural character of the event: “not worthy of belief,” “approved,” and “nothing contrary to the faith” (see figure 1 on page 59). The negative judgment category that asserts that the event is not worthy of belief is given by the Latin formulation constat de non supernaturalitate, that is, “It is established that there is nothing supernatural.” The negative criteria delineated in Normae Congregationis are:

1. Glaring errors in facts

2. Doctrinal errors attributed to God or Mary

3. Pursuit of financial gain

4. Gravely immoral acts committed by the visionary

5. Psychological disorders or tendencies in the visionary

Although Catholics are never obliged to believe in an apparition, even if it is declared to be authentic, they are required to submit themselves to the prudential judgment of the competent ecclesial authority when an apparition is declared false.

The positive judgment, which confirms that the event is worthy of belief, is given by the Latin formulation constat de supernaturalitate, that is, “It is established that there is something supernatural.” The positive criteria delineated in Normae Congregationis are:

1. Moral certainty/great probability of the miracle

2. Positive evaluation of the qualities of the visionary

3. Positive evaluation of the content of the revelations

4. Healthy devotion and spiritual fruits

According to the International Marian Research Institute,³⁴ there are four criteria that determine whether a Marian apparition is to be approved:

1. There must be moral certainty, or at least great probability, that something miraculous has occurred. The commission may interview the visionaries, call other witnesses, and visit the site of the events.

2. The subjects who claim to have had the apparition must be mentally sound, honest, sincere, of upright conduct, obedient to ecclesiastical authorities, and able to return to the normal practices of the Faith (such as participation in communal worship and reception of the sacraments).

3. The content of the revelation or message must be theologically acceptable, morally sound, and free of error.

4. The apparition must result in positive spiritual assets that endure (prayer, conversion, and increase in virtue).

For an apparition to be declared authentic, it is not enough for the messages to be free from doctrinal error. There have been many cases of claimed apparitions involving messages that are sound and are not contrary to the Faith, but other factors, such as the pursuit of financial gain, lack of obedience, or psychological conditions, are present that rule out the possibility of a supernatural cause.

When an apparition is approved, the Blessed Virgin Mary can be venerated in a special way at the site, although neither this veneration nor even the acknowledgment of the supernatural event is required of Catholics.

The third apparition category is the one of uncertainty, calling for a “wait and see” stance. This judgment is given in the form of the Latin phrase non constat de supernaturalitate, that is, “It is not established that there is something supernatural.” The vast majority of investigated apparitions receive this assessment when the investigative committee cannot at that time make a definitive conclusion. An apparition with such a designation might or might not be of supernatural origin. While there is no proof of the phenomenon originating from anything but natural causes, none of the negative criteria are fulfilled and the supernatural cause is not ruled out.

The local bishop will assess pastorally the best path forward and sometimes will give encouragement to the cult that has arisen around the alleged phenomenon (not to be confused with approval of the supernatural character). The associated messages may be approved for publication, and pilgrimages may be allowed at this stage. In some cases, the local ordinary might deem it appropriate to consider the events worthy of faith expression. If the matter is still being investigated, the bishop could permit public worship while continuing to be vigilant in ensuring that the devotions do not wander in deviant directions. Many non constat cases result in the limiting rather than the encouraging of the devotion.

In what continues to be one of the most popular unapproved apparition claims of all time, the events at San Sebastián de Garabandal (commonly referred to simply as Garabandal), Spain, from 1961 to 1965 have left some faithful awaiting in hope the upgrade of the ecclesial judgment of the Church. During those years four young schoolgirls claimed to have received visions and messages from St. Michael the Archangel and the Virgin Mary. There were thousands of claimed visions of Mary with some activity witnessed by thousands and captured in photographs and on live film.

Four successive bishops of Santander have viewed the supernatural character of Garabandal as having no proof of being authentic. In 1993, José Vilaplana, Bishop of Santander, provided a judgment of non constat — that is, not established as being supernatural in origin. Regarding these alleged events, he stated, “All the bishops of the diocese from 1961 through 1970 asserted that the supernatural character of the said apparitions, that took place around that time, could not be confirmed [no constaba].”

In an official note of July 8, 1965, Bishop Eugenio Beitia of Santander wrote:

We point out, however, that we have not found anything deserving of ecclesiastical censorship or condemnation either in the doctrine or in the spiritual recommendations that have been publicized as having been addressed to the faithful, for these contain an exhortation to prayer and sacrifice, to Eucharistic devotion, to veneration of Our Lady in traditional praiseworthy ways, and to holy fear of God offended by our sins. They simply repeat the common doctrine of the Church in these matters.

The bishop of Santander, who had asked for a more explicit declaration from the Holy See on the matter, reaffirmed that he and his predecessors had never approved or encouraged the devotion or even given its promoters their blessing in a sign of approval. On March 10, 1996, the Sacred Congregation wrote in reply and insisted that the decision rests in the hands of the competent ecclesial authority, the local bishop.