Holy Father Jean Paul II venerated the statue of Our Lady of Civitavecchia (Medjugorje)

date: 02.06.2005.

Il Messagero of Wednesday, June 1, 2005 reports – “‘The opening’ of Ratzinger: Papa Wojtyla venerated the Madonna of Civitavecchia”, by Orazio Petrosillo

Vatican City - “The Madonna of Civitavecchia will do great things” said Benedict XVI on Monday, as he was greeting bishop Girolamo Grillo at the end of the meeting with the Italian Episcopal Conference. Exactly on April 1st, the day before the death of Jean Paul II, the bishop of Civitavecchia gave a dossier to the Congregation for the Doctrine of faith chaired by the cardinal Ratzinger. A commission under the auspices of the Congregation had emitted the verdict according to which it does not state the supernatural character of the lacrymation, which was affirmed publicly, during the emission “Door to door”, by cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, already collaborator of Ratzinger.

Monsignor Grillo, in a meeting which took place yesterday, recalled the great veneration that Jean Paul II had for the Madonnina of Civitavecchia, and his desire not to make public this unfavorable verdict, waiting for more profound studies. Repeating things partly already known, but adding other new details, Grillo told that one evening at the end of February 1995, he carried the miraculous statuette to the Vatican to Jean Paul II, who venerated it, prayed in front of it and, at the end, posed on the head of the Virgin a crown which he had brought himself.

The meticulous account of the evening and the veneration expressed by the Pontiff is written in the journal of Mons. Grillo who, while fearing not to be believed after his death concerning the course of the accomplished gestures of the Pope Wojtyla, required of the secretary Mons. Stanislaw Dziwisz a kind of testimony of the same Pontiff. A copy of the pages of the journal was sent to the Vatican, and the Pope authenticated it with his signature: “Joannes Paulus PP II”, October 20, 2000.

For recall, the statuette which represents the Virgin of Medjugorje was weeping blood (the clinical examinations proved that it was male human blood) 13 times at the house of Gregori, from February 2 to 6, 1995, in the presence of tens of witnesses, even public functionaries, and one 14th time at the bishop’s house, on the following March 15. A commission of theologians decided in favour of the supernatural origin of the events; another, made up under the auspices of the Congregation, denies its supernatural character.