The Vatican sends a contradictory message to faithful Catholics who claim to have seen the Virgin Mary

Catholics who claim to have seen and spoken to the Virgin Mary at a Bosnian monument received mixed messages from the Vatican on Thursday after the Church refused to say whether their visions were real, while continuing to support worship at the site.

The Vatican has released a 17-page report, reviewed by Pope Francis, that gave its seal of approval to the “devotion and spiritual experience” of the faithful in Medjugorje, a Bosnian village that has become a popular pilgrimage site after six children reported seeing the Virgin Mary there in 1981. This was reported by the New York Times.

In the four decades since then, millions of people have flocked to the area as more visitors claimed the Virgin Mother had appeared to them with messages of peace and spiritual guidance.

However, some Catholics have been skeptical of the alleged apparitions, believing that those who claim to have been enlightened by the Virgin had ulterior motives, including a possible attempt to extort money.

The Vatican said the site has been precious to many Catholics, but its decision to authorize it for public worship “does not imply that the alleged supernatural events are declared authentic,” the paper reported.

The official statement comes after decades of inconclusive research into the alleged spiritual phenomenon and after Pope Francis reportedly said in 2017 that the Virgin Mary was “not a telegraph operator.”

David Murgia, an author and journalist who has written two books on Medjugorje, criticized the Church's vague statement on the alleged apparitions after the faithful have been waiting for a conclusive answer for so many years.

“People go to Medjugorje because they believe that Our Lady appears in real time,” he told the Times. “I think it’s absurd that they tell me that the consequences are good, but not if the origin is real.”

“It’s like saying the fruit is good, but we don’t know if the tree exists,” Murgia told the outlet.

The Vatican said apparitions and sightings are private experiences for the people who allegedly saw them and therefore Catholics are not obliged to accept their authenticity.

“The faithful are not obliged to believe in them,” the Church states in its report.

Under the new rules cited in the document, a Vatican official will oversee and authorize all messages that the Medjugorje parish posts on its website.

The Vatican also acknowledged that most of the thousands of messages contained “great value and express the constant teachings of the Gospel.”