The pace has been furious and fast–unprecedented in recent memory: Vatican decisions on apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

And they have come at the behest of a Pontiff many thought was indifferent to mysticism.

Acceptances and rejections.

It started with release of new norms for evaluating such phenomena from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

They were released on May 17, 2024, firmly taking control of such matters from local bishops, who have been notoriously inconsistent in their decisions.

Those norms set the highest level of approval not as a declaration of supernaturality–the previous highest authorization–but as a nihil obstat (allowance for devotion), making it so that a declaration of actual supernaturality could be declared only by the Holy Father.

That set the stage for what has become a torrent.

First was outright rejection of an alleged visionary named Gisella Cardia and her phenomena, some of it strange, at a place in Italy called Trevignano Romano. The determination was issued on June 28, 2024, and verified the local bishop’s judgment that the situation was “not supernatural,” confirming “his prohibition of devotions and pilgrimages in the places associated with the events,” in the words of the Vatican’s official news organization.

The Cardia case was followed a mere ten days later, on July 8, 2024, by a positive judgment regarding a series of apparitions known as Rosa Mystica in Montichiari and Fontanelle (also Italy) that had been in limbo from 1968 through the 1990s as successive bishops rejected the apparitions until, in 1997, the local episcopacy allowed a shrine.

“Based on new regulations, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has expressed its positive opinion regarding the devotion to Our Lady of Montichiari in northern Italy,” the Vatican said—essentially overruling those earlier bishops. The headline on the Vatican news wire: “Green Light For Devotion To Our Lady Mystical Rose,” the article that followed explaining that “this approval is conveyed through a letter to Bishop Pierantonio Tremolada, with the endorsement of Pope Francis.”

Rosa Mystica statues had spread around the world and some of them allegedly had wept.

It was an extraordinary reversal and paved the way for potential approval of even more spectacular apparitional events in the town of Ghiaie di Bonate [see story on Spirit Daily] to a child named Adelaide Roncalli, who likewise had spent decades in suppression.

If that wasn’t enough to provoke breathlessness among the Marian faithful, the positive Rosa Mystica judgment was followed three days later with revelation by the dicastery that alleged apparitions in Amsterdam from 1945 to 1959, had been formally but quietly rejected by no less than Pope Paul VI.

This clarified a chaotic series of events during which some local bishops had rejected the Dutch apparitions (“Our Lady of All Nations,” to a seer named Ida Peerdeman) while more recent bishops approved them. Now, they were reversed. Said the Vatican: “To clarify any confusion, the decision approved by the Pope [Paul VI] is made public, which in this case is the most negative judgment, noting the non-supernaturality.”

Case closed. The implication was made more interesting yet by the fact that a statue fashioned after the rejected Amsterdam apparitions had cried on 101 occasions in Akita, Japan.

Swerving heads once more, the Vatican announced, on July 16, 2024 (feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel) that it was “confirming the nihil obstat proposed by the prelate with regard to events surrounding the Diocesan Shrine of Our Lady of the Rock (‘Madonna dello Scoglio’) in Santa Domenica di Placanica, Calabria.” Approval.

It was there, on May 11, 1968,  in an obscure series of events, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared for the first time to Cosimo Fragomeni, a humble 18-year-old farmer. According to the new Norms, the nihil obstat “is not to be understood as an approval of the supernatural character of the phenomenon,” emphasized the Vatican, but rather as recognition of the “spiritual experience” proposed for the shrine.

Under Pope Francis, the Vatican also has removed the power to oversee the world-famous apparition site of Medjugorje from a bishop in Mostar who had been strongly against the apparitions, placing it instead in the hands of a Vatican ambassador and allowing release of a study by a commission that, after two years of examination, had concluded that at the very least, the first week of apparitions at Medjugorje in 1981 could be declared authentic. (A judgment has yet not been rendered on the hundreds–indeed, thousands–of subsequent apparitions.)

So it is that Pope Francis, who many feared to be an opponent of Marian apparitions, has made as many or more positive judgments on them than any recent Pontiff, with the possible exception of Saint John Paul II, who accepted apparitions at Betania in Venezuela; Kibeho in Africa; and Cuapa in Nicaragua, though technically the judgments were issued at the diocesan level and then filed at the Vatican.

Resources: (The Final Hour, Beauty Will Save the World)