For several years I had been planning to write a book about Medjugorje and the Secrets of Medjugorje, but I hesitated to do so. Usually when you have a strong urge to write you indulge, especially those who, like me until now, usually write fiction books like me, but I postponed, I wanted to address this topic and at the same time I was running away from it. One day Padre Pio appeared to me in a dream and told me " So, Guagliò, ? - Do we want to write this book or not?". And I answered him: "It's OK, Father, but then to whom do I propose it? ". His gaze became sharp, acute, as if he wanted to read inside me, inside my inner feelings. "What you want to make known you can make known, you choose the way". Now, far from wanting to see in this a divine imperative, the anointing of the Lord, I simply took this dream as a good omen, as an incentive to want to convey what I know, what I have accumulated in my core on this subject, including the doubts and reservations of friends, but also and above all to share the treasures that are available to all, and give an answer to certain doubts and concerns. I have always known that these remain dead letters, and since the answer was often and is still close to our hands, but it was not written anywhere, I felt almost obliged to write this essay. However, I do not want to make any demands, but that the reader creates his own conscience, assimilates what I write and then elaborates freely. I chose to publish it in this way, on certain platforms, because I believe that even the most sincere and profound books on the subject of Marian Apparitions, La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje and much more, are affected by convenience and opportunity. I needed to write about these topics in absolute freedom, without being bound to any scheme, to any file where you check alternative boxes to the others. Not that I had to propose some bizarre things, but if it is true that the truth makes free, that the truth manifests its radiant beauty, perhaps in a gradual way, it is also true that to do so it is necessary to have freedom, the possibility and in case also the courage to reveal it. The truth brings with it inconveniences, even if its fruits are luxuriant, which is why Sister Lucy, revealing the Secrets of Fatima, always had an attitude suspended between obedience, silence and irrepressible impulse. Prophecy, truth and knowledge burn within the mystical soul and demand that they be revealed in all their magnificence. Our Lady has a clear plan for the life of the living, for our planet, it is necessary that more people really know what future awaits us, what challenges lie ahead in the immediate horizon. We are living particular but also exciting times, and this is therefore a circumstance, a fortune and a 'misfortune' in some ways. We are and will be pioneers of a new world. In the essay, which is also a guide to the new times, my wish is that everyone can find ideas, reflections, but above all, even a clear and concrete information, that can be a path to follow, with both your heart and your mind. In fact, then I had many things to say, to express, to reveal. At a certain point, all this made a critical mass, and I found it burning inside me, like a torch, or, in other words, I had to empty that sack that I was carrying on me, because humanity must know, or rather, a part of the people to whom this book can say a lot or a little, must know our times and those that are at the gates as they really will be, to the extent that we are allowed. Christian culture does not have a cryptic connotation, but demands that everything has to be in the public domain, therefore emerging from the shadows. Of course, sometimes with reasons of opportunity that mark the timing, but there is nothing that is or that exists that should not be revealed. Is with this anxiety of the heart, as those of who wants to communicate a new discovery to the world, that I invite you to read this book.

In June 1981, six young Croatians in the village of Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia, reported that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them. The Medjugorje visionaries say that Mary has returned every day since then, bringing them important messages from heaven to convey to the world. Throughout history, people have reported encountering extraordinary religious experiences-apparitions of the Virgin Mary, visions of Jesus Christ, weeping statues and icons, the stigmata, physical healings and miracles, and experiences of the afterlife-and interpreted them as supernatural in origin. Scholars have often tried to reinterpret such experiences, including those described by the great mystics like Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Teresa of Avila, into natural or psychopathological categories, such as hysteria, hallucination, delusion, epileptic seizures, psychosis, the workings of the unconscious mind, or fraud. Are such reductionist explanations valid? Over the past three decades the Medjugorje visionaries have been subjected to extensive medical, psychological, and scientific examination, even while undergoing their visionary experiences. Daniel Klimek argues that the case of Medjugorje affords a rare opportunity to understand a deeper dimension of extraordinary religious phenomena. Presenting and analyzing the scientific studies on the visionaries in juxtaposition with the major scholars and debates surrounding religious experience, Klimek concludes that a multidisciplinary approach grants a more holistic and deeper understanding of such extraordinary religious experiences.

The original and bestselling story of the miracles and message of Medjugorje, the little town in the hills of the former Yugoslavia that has become a global phenomenon. Journalist Wayne Weible tells how his life was forever changed by what he experienced there. With refreshing candor and self-deprecating humor, Wayne Weible (1937-2018) takes readers with him on the adventure to Medjugorje that radically and permanently changed his life. You will discover the apparitions of the Blessed Mother along with him, as he chronicles the ways that the Virgin Mary continues to speak to the world today from Medjugorje. This book continues as the bestseller on Medjugorje in the English language, with over 385,000 copies sold. “Since 1981, the message of conversion and reconciliation with God has been uniquely reaffirmed by the Blessed Virgin Mary in the unlikely little village of Medjugorje. She has been appearing there daily to six young people who live in the valley that lies in the shadow of the cross on Mount Krizevac. According to the youths chosen for this special mission of renewal, the mother of Jesus is bringing an urgent plea from her Son to all mankind to turn away from a world terminally ill with the disease of sin and reconcile with Him.” —Wayne Weible

Mirjana Soldo was only 16 years old when she and five other children saw a mysterious woman on a hillside in the village of Medjugorje, then part of Yugoslavia. The woman'who possessed a beauty and grace that seemed to come from beyond'identified herself as the Virgin Mary. The apparitions that began on the afternoon of June 24, 1981 would dramatically change Mirjana's life and the lives of countless people around the world. Her claims, however, brought the wrath of the Communist government down on Mirjana and everyone around her. Amazingly, the apparitions have continued for over 35 years. Millions of people travel to Medjugorje every year in search of answers to life's biggest questions. And, according to Mirjana, the Virgin entrusted her with ten secrets that foretell the future of the world'secrets that she will reveal within her lifetime.

With an introduction by Pope Benedict XVI and including information previously suppressed, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, definitively reveals and explains one of the most controversial events in twentieth-century Catholicism—the 1917 apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima. During World War I, three Portuguese children received a vision in which Mary, the Mother of Jesus, foretold great global turmoil. The first part of their vision—warnings about World War II, communism, and the spread of atheism—were widely publicized, but Vatican officials were hesitant to reveal the vision’s concluding images, thus creating the "secret" of Fatima. Speculation about this secret gripped many Catholics, and the aura of intrigue surrounding Fatima grew when the Church hierarchy barred the last surviving visionary from speaking publicly. In THE LAST SECRET OF FATIMA, Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican equivalent of prime minister and a top advisor to Pope Benedict, breaks the Vatican’s official silence on the last secret. Rather than Armageddon, he claims, the final prophecy envisaged the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Bertone argues the apparition at Fatima was a call to renewal for the Church, and he was assigned the task of promulgating this message by the Pope.

A Powerful book of adventure and faith" - FRANK SCHAEFFER - New York Times best selling author of fiction and nonfiction. With unexpected turns and a full dose of scholarly intrigue along the way, The Madonna Files is a contemporary religious thriller that explores the hidden secrets of Catholic Church. Five years in the making, The Madonna Files is "The most prophetic book of our times" The Madonna Files has been compared to Da Vinci Code, the historical fiction by Malachi Martin, The Shack, even G.K. Chesterson's Father Brown mysteries. Stephen Ryan's explosive debut novel challenges the prevailing orthodoxies of American history and Christianity, and reveals the dynamic presence of the Virgin Mary throughout the ages. On the quiet campus of M.I.T., a math professor is asked by the Vatican to determine the probability that six children are telling the truth. The children, from a small town in Bosnia, a town filled with sacred drama, say they see the Virgin Mary.

In the past two centuries hundreds of apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been reported, drawing crowds to the seers and the sites and constituting events of great religious significance for millions of people worldwide. Here Sandra Zimdars-Swartz provides a detective-like investigation of the experiences and interpretations of six major apparitions, including those at La Salette and Lourdes in France during the mid-nineteenth century; at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917; and the more recent ones at San Damiano, Italy; Garabandal, Spain; and Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, where the apparitions continue. Adopting a phenomenological approach to these "encounters with Mary"--one that is neither apologetic nor antagonistic--the author explores the tension between the personal meaning of the events for their subjects and the public appropriation of this meaning by a larger religious community. Along the way she examines the backgrounds of the seers, their willingness or reluctance to talk about the apparitions and their messages, the amount of emotional support they received from family and community as news of the apparitions spread, the reports of miracles at apparition sites, the reactions of local authorities, and the steps taken by the Roman Catholic Church in officially recognizing or rejecting the apparitions as worthy of belief. The author concludes with a survey of religious worldviews based on Marian apparitions, focusing especially on the now-popular transcultural apocalyptic nature of these messages to the modern world. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.