The recent flurry of decisions on apparitions from the Vatican–expected to continue at a solid pace–left open a number of questions, perhaps none larger than in Akita, Japan.

That’s where a deaf nun named Sister Agnes Sasagawa “heard” the voice of the Virgin Mary in 1973—starting October 13—coming from a statue in the chapel. This occurred on 101 occasions.

The voice—with bracing warnings about the future—has seen partial Church approval as local bishops wrangled with it through the years, some for, some against.

Now it’s in the hands of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the question: should the Church validate devotions spawned by the phenomena and followed by many devout Catholics for years?

One issue is the statue: it’s a wooden one fashioned after the “Our Lady of All Peoples (or Nations)” apparitions witnessed by another reputed seer in Amsterdam. The Amsterdam apparitions are now, in a recent determination, officially rejected by the Vatican.

This is the image of “Our Lady of All Nations” as fashioned after the Amsterdam apparitions (1945-1959).

This is the statue at Akita from which the nun, Sister Agnes Sasagawa (who has spent her later years in sort of an exile near Tokyo and reportedly is now near death), “heard” the voice of Mary:

Will the Vatican, by issuing a nihil obstat, authenticate devotions and sacramental statues spawned by Akita despite this connection to Amsterdam?

The local ordinary of the convent, John Shojiro Ito, Bishop of Niigata (served 1962–1985), recognized “the supernatural character of a series of mysterious events concerning the statue of the Holy Mother Mary” and authorized “the veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita” within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Niigata in a 1984 pastoral letter.

In June 1988, a now-retired Ito met with Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, then head of the Doctrine of the Faith, and Ratzinger reportedly gave his verbal, informal approval to Ito’s 1984 letter, while not rendering “judgement about the credibility of the events.”

However, two years later, in 1990, Peter Shirayanagi, Archbishop of Tokyo and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan, told the Italian periodical 30 Giorni that “the events of Akita are no longer to be taken seriously.”

The Holy See has never issued definitive judgement on the matter. Because Bishop Ito’s declaration was not reversed by his successors or by the Holy See, for now the situation remains officially approved for the Diocese of Niigata according to Canon law but without the formal acceptance the Vatican has rendered for apparitions such as those in Kibeho, Rwanda, and Betania, Venezuela, to cite two other recent cases.

[resources: The Last Secret and The Final Hour]