In the wake of canonising two children whose visions of the Virgin Mary in Fatima in Portugal a century ago transfixed the world, Pope Francis has cast doubt on the veracity of visions that continue to this day in Bosnia.
More than 30 million Catholics have visited Medjugorje since six children began reporting regular visions of the Virgin Mary in 1981.
'These presumed apparitions don't have a lot of value. This I say as a personal opinion,' Pope Francis told journalists on the plane as he returned to Rome from Fatima.
The visions in Medjugorje have transformed the fortunes of the town. Some of the children, all now adults, claim the Madonna still appears to them.
The claims were so controversial that Pope Benedict set up a commission to examine them. The report has never been published but Pope Francis said that it made clear the Church's 'doubts' about the continuing apparitions.
Pope Francis said the claims are still being looked into in remarks reported in full by Catholic News Agency.
The Pope said: 'I prefer the Madonna as mother, our mother, and not a Madonna who is the head of a telegraph office, who every day sends a message at such-and-such an hour. This is not the Mother of Jesus.
'Who thinks that the Madonna says, "Come tomorrow at this time, and at such time I will deliver a message to that visionary?"
He conceded that pilgrims to Medjugorje experience a spiritual renewal, 'encounter God, change their lives' and also said he believed the original apparitions in the early 1980s are more likely to be authentic than the continuing ones.
Referring to the Portuguese visionaries, Pope Francis said: 'Fatima certainly has a message of peace. It's brought to humanity by three great communicators that were less than 13 years old, which is interesting. Yes, I came as a pilgrim. The canonisation was something that wasn't planned from the beginning, because the process of the miracles was in progress but the all of a sudden the reports were all positive, and it was done – that's how the story was told - for me it was a very great joy. What can the world expect? Peace. And what am I talking about from now on with whomever? Peace.'
