Our Lady of Medjugorje (Croatian: Međugorska Gospa), also called Queen of Peace (Croatian: Kraljica mira), is the title given to a series of visions of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, which are said to have occurred for six Herzegovinian Croat children in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning in 1981. They reported there that the Virgin Mary had said: "What I started in Fatima, I will complete in Medjugorje. My Heart will triumph". Those claiming to be the visionaries often refer to the apparition as the Gospa, which is a Croatian archaism for 'lady'.
After considering the significant number of people who go to Medjugorje and the abundant "fruits of grace" that have sprung from it, Pope Francis lifted the ban on officially organized pilgrimages in May 2019. This was not to be interpreted as an authentication of known events, which still require examination, according to the Catholic Church.
On September 19, 2024, the Vatican granted "the spiritual event" of Medjugorje a Nihil Obstat, which means Catholics "are authorized to give it their adherence in a prudent manner", encouraging pilgrimages to Medjugorje without entering into the question of alleged apparitions. The Holy See also said believers should not go to Medjugorje for "alleged visionaries" but for the Queen of Peace.
At the time of the reported visions, the village of Medjugorje was located in Bosnia and Herzegovina, part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a federation of various Slavic nations. There were tensions among the nations, exacerbated by religious difference: most Croats are Catholic, most Serbs are Eastern Orthodox, while the Bosnians and Herzegovinians are a mix of the two and included a third group—the Bosnian Muslims. The death of President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia in early May 1980 had led to anti-communist backlash and the build up of ethnic tensions, destabilizing the country and moving it towards political, economic, and national collapse. The public debt soared and national dissatisfaction was evident in the 1981 Albanian student protests in Kosovo. After Tito's death, Yugoslavia's security apparatus enhanced its activities against perceived "enemies of the state", especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the apparatus was most loyal to Tito. Such activity was particularly oriented towards the Catholic Church in Herzegovina.
In addition, the election of Pope John Paul II from communist Poland and the Catholic Solidarity Movement intensified the conflict between the Vatican and Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe.
In the 1980s there was a boom of Marian apparitions in Europe, especially in Ireland and Italy. Chris Maunder connects these apparitions, including those in Medjugorje, with the anti-communist movement in Eastern Europe that led to the downfall of communism.
The Franciscan Province of Herzegovina was established in 1843 when it was separated from the Franciscan Province of Bosna Srebrena. In 1846, the Holy See established the Apostolic Vicariate of Herzegovina, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire and it was considered to be a mission area. The first vicars were all Franciscans. In 1881, the area came under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Pope Leo XIII took steps to establish dioceses and appoint local bishops.
The Franciscans of Herzegovina saw this as a threat, depriving them of a source of income and their role as community social leaders which they attained over centuries of "difficult missionary" work while under Turkish domination.
A jurisdictional conflict arose, known as the Herzegovina Affair or Herzegovina Case which dates back to 1923, when Rome made a decision to have the Franciscans turn over half of the parishes they control to the secular clergy. A smooth transition was inhibited by both a lack of sufficient diocesan clergy and by the resistance of the friars to the divestment of their parishes. The Franciscans complied only partially and have refused to comply with Rome's decisions ever since. Their resistance to this change put them into conflict with the Church's hierarchy, including their Franciscan Order in Rome. Their resistance to comply was against both church authority and canon law.
In 1933 Pope Pius XI requested the whole Catholic world to erect crosses on the dominant mountains in honor of the 1900th anniversary of the crucifixion of Jesus. In 1933 a massive cross was erected by the local Catholic diocese on a mountain near Medjuorje. The 540-metre (1,770 ft) peak was originally named Mount Sipovac but the locals changed the name to Mount Križevac which means 'Mount of the Cross'. They constructed the 10-metre (33 ft) high cross weighing fifteen tons in six weeks, carrying all the building materials on their backs.
In 1975, Pope Paul VI, in the papal decree Romanis Pontificibus, decreed that the Franciscans must withdraw from most of the parishes in the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno, retaining 30 and leaving 52 to the diocesan clergy. In the 1980s the Franciscans still held 40 parishes under the direction of 80 friars. In August 1980, the new bishop of Mostar, Pavao Žanić, immediately announced that only one quarter of the city would remain under the Franciscans.
The Mostar Cathedral of Mary, Mother of the Church was completed in the summer of 1980.
According to Michael Budde in his book Beyond the Borders of Baptism Catholicity, Allegiances, and Lived Identities, as it gained a national and international reputation, the Medjugorje pilgrimage site became a formidable symbol of the power of religion in the fight against the Communist Yugoslav regime.
On 24 June 1981 around 6:30 pm, 15-year-old Ivanka Ivanković and her 16-year-old friend Mirjana Dragičević were out walking. According to Ivanka, she noticed the shimmering silhouette of a woman bathed in a brilliant light on nearby Mount Podbrdo. She told Mirjana, but Mirjana scoffed at the idea and they continued walking. The pair met 13-year-old Milka Pavlovic, and later all three reportedly saw the apparition. They were then joined by Vicka Ivanković, 17, who also reportedly saw the apparition and ran off in fright. Vicka later returned with Ivan Dragičević, 16, and Ivan Ivanković, 20, who were picking apples; Ivan Dragičević was so frightened that he dropped his apples and ran. Later, they said they all saw the same apparition. The author T.K. Rousseau has noted that "the Medjugorje visions began only days after Orthodox Serbs commemorated the 40th anniversary of mass killings of Serbs by the Ustaše at Šurmanci during the Second World War."
The six seers told Franciscan friar Father Jozo Zovko, who was the parish priest at St. James Church in Medjugorje, that they had seen the Virgin Mary (Gospa). Zovko was initially skeptical. He noticed that the seers became agitated if anyone hinted that they were lying, and that their physical descriptions of the Gospa were consistent with each other. According to Randall Sullivan, they described her as a young woman about twenty years old with blue eyes, black hair, and "a crown of stars" around her head. They said she wore a white veil and a bluish-grey robe, but that they could not see her feet, as she was hovering above the ground on a white cloud. They said she spoke in a singing voice.
In early July, Zovko abandoned his initial skepticism and embraced the apparitions. Yugoslav officials condemned the reports as a "clerical-nationalist" conspiracy on the part of Croat extremists.
The Mostar Cathedral of Mary, Mother of the Church was completed in the summer of 1980. In order to create the cathedral parish it was decided to split the parish of SS. Peter and Paul. The Franciscans objected to this as being unfair.
Vicka allegedly received messages from the Gospa from 19 December 1981 until 29 September 1982, and recorded them in her diary.