It’s all in your head anyway! The Camino is more than just a physical trail, writes Colm Fitzpatrick   As I walked through the town of Arzúa on a blistering hot day, a message engraved into a wooden post stopped me in my tracks. It read: ‘Why go to Santiago – it’s all in your…

The Annual ‘Fan the Flame’ Mass for all children who received the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Diocese of Derry during the past year was celebrated in Celtic Park GAA Ground earlier this month. The Mass also marked the end of their primary education. Around 3,000 young people from Donegal, Derry and Tyrone attended, many…

Louise Hall On June 24, 1981, six young children claimed to have seen a vision of Our Lady on a small hill called Podbrdo in the poor Catholic farming village of Medjugorje. Although they ran away terrified at the sight of the apparition, they returned to the same spot at the same time the following…

Finbar O’Leary It was the Feast of St John the Baptist on the June 24, 1981, when the young visionaries had their first encounter with Our Lady or Gospa in Croatian. Frightened and bewildered they ran away. Returning the following evening Vicka still only 16 years of age and the eldest of the six carried…

Aleksandra Januszewska and Gabriela Zarzycka A couple of weeks ago, we had a very spontaneous idea to go together on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje. Medjugorje is a small village in Bosnia and Hercegovina where the Blessed Virgin Mary has been appearing since 1981. We are sisters – the elder Aleksandra is a busy homeschooling mother…

Carmel Kelly With the boys both married and after my mother’s death in 1994, my husband Bill and I were free agents and enjoyed the following few years having no one to really worry about and going wherever we wanted to. A regular thing with myself and some friends was a biannual visit to Lourdes.…

Ann Corrigan This is our experience of a trip to Medjugorje in a little village in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Counting down the days to ApriI 22, 2019, I would join a group parish pilgrimage to Medjugorje. One day out of the blue the husband of my sister Margaret said that he would be on holidays…

On June 24, 1981, Our Lady first appeared in Medjugorje to two young woman, Mirjana Dragićević and Ivanka Ivanković. The next day she appeared again to the girls and four other young people. These six visionaries, aged 10 to 16, had no relation to one another. Three of the six still report daily apparitions, while…

Approval Process More than 1,500 visions of Mary have been reported around the world, but in the past century, fewer than 20 cases have received Church approval as worthy of belief. The Vatican’s ‘Norms regarding the manner of proceedings in the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations’ were approved by Pope Paul VI in 1978.…

Fr Ruairí Ó Domhnaill There is something about the experience of hearing Confessions in Medjugorje that even the most skeptical of priests has to admit that the unique and sacred quality of this sacramental encounter in this little village in Bosnia Herzegovina is rarely experienced anywhere else. I have often listened to priests returning from…