http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/defrock.htm

The Promoter of the Medjugorje ‘Apparitions’ is Defrocked

The Daily Telegraph of 28 July has reported that the Franciscan priest, Fr Tomislav Vlasic, has been defrocked by decision of Pope Benedict XVI. The former priest was responsible for spreading stories about repeated ‘apparitions’ of the Mother of God at Medjugorje in Bosnia. This is a Second World War sites near where thousands of Serbian Orthodox were massacred by Roman Catholic Croats, encouraged by sadistic Franciscans.

Vlasic was the ‘spiritual father’ of six young people who asserted that over a period of twenty-eight years the Virgin Mary had repeatedly appeared to them. As a result the small Bosnian Croat town was visited by some 30 million gullible Roman Catholics and their ecumenical allies. This was despite the fact that the Vatican had always refused to authenticate the apparitions. This was on the recommendation of the Roman Catholic diocesan bishop, at war with the local Franciscans, who saw in the fabrications a mere money-making fraud.

Last year the Vatican conducted an investigation into an accusation that Vlasic had had a love affair with a nun. The Vatican also concluded that the priest had ‘exaggerated’ stories of the apparitions and found him accused of ‘dubious teachings, manipulation, mysticism and disobedience of the Church’. The priest had indeed set up his own community in Medjugorje, which was neither in the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop, nor in the jurisdiction of the Fransciscans. Vlasic had refused to co-operate with the investigation and had been transferred to a monastery in Aquila in Italy. Here he was forbidden to have contact with anyone, including his lawyer, without the abbot’s permission. The head of the Franciscan order has forbidden the former priest to make any statements about religious issues, including Medjugorje. Otherwise he will be excommunicated.
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