Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

7. Mary-making in Herzegovina
1. On 24 June 1981, at Medjugorje, two teenage girls reported to their parents
and the Franciscans that they had an encounter with someone who looked like
the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, or, in the local dialect, the Gospa. The girls,
Ivanka Ivanković and Mirjana Dragičević, returned to the site the next day with
their friends Vicka Ivanković and Marija Pavlovic and two boys, Ivan Dragičević
and Jakov Čolo. The visions continued at the hill of Podbrdo above Medjugorje,
but when large groups of pilgrims flocked to the barren Dinaric karst to pray
for hours in the Mediterranean summer heat, the show moved, allegedly on the
recommendation of the Gospa herself, to the interior of the spacious parish
church of Saint James at Medjugorje. Two more children, Jelena Vasilj and Mirjana
Vasilj, also reported communication with the Gospa on a daily basis.
2. From 1981 to 1997, over 22 million people made pilgrimage to Medjugorje.
See Richard J. Beyer, Medjugorje Day by Day (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press,
1993).
3. See William A. Christian, Jr., Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign
of Christ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Daniel H. Levine, ed.,
Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America (Chapel Hill:University of North
Carolina Press, 1986). See also Jakov Jukić, Religija u modernom industrijskom
drusˇvu (Religion in modern industrial society) (Split: Crkva u svijetu, 1973),
p. 327.
4. See David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian
Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
5. According to information given to me by the monks from the Franciscan
cloister in Duvno-Tomislavgrad, Bosnia-Herzegovian, in an interview with the
monks and the monastery’s superior Gabro Mioč in April 1991. An article about
this was published in the special issue “Herzegovina,” supplement to the weekly
Nedjeljna Dalmacija, May 1991.
6. From my interview with Mioč in April 1991.
7. William A. Christian, Jr., “Religious Apparitions and the Cold War in
Southern Europe,” in Religion, Power and Protest in Local Communities, ed. Eric
Wolf (Berlin: Mouton, 1984), p. 253.
8. According to Pedro Ramet, “in 1981, when the apparitions were first reported,
the growth rate of industrial production slowed to 4 percent (from 5
percent in the 1970s), agricultural growth slid to 1.25 percent, domestic consumer
demand declined by 3.5 percent, [and] unemployment rose 3 percent ...
over 1980 (there were 808,000 unemployed that year). ...[I]nflation also began
to accelerate sharply in 1981 ...fixed investment as a share of the Gross Domestic
Product declined steadily from 1979 to 1983 ...[and] the mood in Yugoslavia
[in] 1981–1983 was generally despondent, where economic matters
were concerned.” “The Miracle at Medjugorje—A Functional Perspective,” South
Slav Journal 8 (1985), p. 17.
9. Henri Joyeux et al., Etudes médicales et scientifiques sur les apparitions de
Medjugorje (Paris: OEIL, 1985).
10. Z ˇ anić implied (but did not explicitly say) this in an interview with me at
the bishops’ office in Mostar on 4 February 1991 and again on 15 June 1991.
Vjekoslav Perica, “Deset godina kasnije: Novo čudo u Medjugorju” (Ten years
later: New miracle at Medjugorje), Nedjeljna Dalmacija, 30 June 1991.
11. As said by Z ˇ anić in two interviews me conducted in July 1990 in Split
and in February 1991 in Mostar.
276 notes to pages 109–111