The papal preacher’s in a pickle.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, who has been the pope’s preacher since 1980, was to be the keynote speaker at the 12th International Seminar for Priests July 3-5 in Medjugorje, the site of thousands of alleged appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Now, Cantalamessa has pulled out, because he did not get permission to speak there from the local bishop:

“My principle is not to preach, especially not to the clergy, without the permission of the local bishop,” Father Cantalamessa wrote in a letter to Bishop Peric June 13. Excerpts of the letter were released by the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno June 18.

Father Cantalamessa is a well-known figure in the Vatican, and every Friday during Lent and Advent he preaches meditations in the presence of the pope, cardinals, bishops and the superiors of religious orders.

Father Cantalamessa’s decision to withdraw from the seminar was announced publicly in English and Croatian by Msgr. Srecko Majic, Mostar vicar general.

“This diocesan chancery never received any written request for permission, as is the norm, from either of the parties involved with regard to the spiritual retreat,” he said.

“The norms of the Code of Canon Law have not been respected in this case,” he added.
[snip]
The monsignor said organizers were also billing Father Jozo Zovko, who throughout the 1980s acted as “spiritual adviser” to the six alleged visionaries, as a confessor to priests even though his priestly faculties were revoked by Bishop Peric in 2004.
[snip]
Bishop Peric vehemently opposes claims that Mary has appeared in the village almost 40,000 times in the last 26 years and last year complained personally to Pope Benedict XVI that priests from overseas were ignoring the wishes of the local bishops not to go on pilgrimages there.

Last year Bishop Peric appealed to the visionaries to stop claiming that Mary has been visiting them for decades.

Preaching in St James’s Church, the place where most of the apparitions are said to have taken place, he said the church “has not accepted, either as supernatural or as Marian, any of the apparitions.”

“As the local bishop, I maintain that regarding the events of Medjugorje, on the basis of the investigations and experience gained thus far throughout these last 25 years, the church has not confirmed a single apparition as authentically being the Madonna,” he said.

Sounds like the decades-long controversy over Medjugorge may be coming to a head. But people will believe what they want to. Faith, after all, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. The list of discredited apparitions is long — but so is the list of those people who still believe in them, despite evidence to the contrary.