Again, Medjugorje is in the news.  And again, it’s about the local bishop warning the citizens not to believe in the alleged apparitions.

Confirming young people from the parish in the Bosnian town of Medjugorje, Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar-Duvno asked them not to behave as if the alleged Marian apparitions reported in the parish were real.

In late September, the bishop posted on his diocesan Web site an Italian translation of his homily from the June confirmation Mass, as well as letters to the Franciscan pastor of the Medjugorje parish and to another priest serving there.

Bishop Peric had told the young people that, during a visit to the Vatican early in the year, the top officials at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Vatican Secretariat of State confirmed they were telling anyone who asked that the Catholic Church has never recognized the alleged apparitions as authentic.

“Brothers and sisters, let us not act as if these ‘apparitions’ were recognized and worthy of faith,” the bishop said in the homily he gave June 6.

“If, as Catholics, devoted sons and daughters of the church, we want to live according to the norms and the teaching of the church, glorifying the Holy Trinity, venerating Blessed Mary … and professing all the church has established in the creed, we do not turn to certain alternative ‘apparitions’ or ‘messages’ to which the church has not attributed any supernatural character,” Bishop Peric said.