june horoscope 2011 virgo
It Is Difficult To Find A Pilgrim Who Does Not Speak Of The Peace And Tranquillity Of Cross Hill, Site Of The Supposed Apparitions That Turned A Remote And Beggared Hamlet Into One Of The Most Famous Corners Of Bosnia.
MORE than a million folks visit Medjugorje each year, thousands of them Irish, and most come to climb the hill where six locals claim to have first seen and spoken to the Virgin Mary in June 1981.
It is tough to find a traveller who doesn't speak of the peace and tranquillity of Cross Hill, site of the supposed apparitions that turned a remote and impoverished village into one of the most noted corners of Bosnia.
Few visitors make the short journey from Medjugorje to Surmanci. It's just a few miles from Cross Hill, but far removed from the guest houses, restaurants and memento shops of its respected neighbor.
There is deep quiet in this place, but only those that have no idea its history could talk of peace and tranquillity.
In Aug 1941, local members of the nazi Croat Ustashe organisation murdered some SIX HUNDRED Serb men, girls and kids in deep natural pits on this barren plateau. Ethnic cleansing could have entered the lexicon during the 1990s Balkan wars, although it was grimly familiar to a previous generation of families from this region.
In the 1940s, the craggy hills of Herzegovina saw vicious fighting between the Ustashe who ruled Croatia as a Fascist puppet state Serb patriot Chetniks and the communist Partisans controlled by Josip Broz Tito, who would eventually prevail and govern Yugoslavia till his demise in 1980.
Each side committed hideous atrocities, including Tito's Partisans, who massacred 30 Franciscan friars at Siroki Brijeg near Medjugorje, as punishment for supporting the Ustashe.
The Croat Catholic Church backed the Ustashe and its drive for an ethnically pure bigger Croatia, and a couple of clergymen and Franciscan priests were accused of abhorrent war crimes.
After the war, Tito sought to neutralize the resentment between parts of the Yugoslav population by suppressing religion and patriotism. He showed the inter-ethnic fighting as a simple struggle between fascist Ustashe and Chetniks and anti-fascist Partisans ; the second had won, fascism had been routed and the roots of conflict had been removed.
In places like Medjugorje, though, the injuries never truly healed. Croats felt humiliated at being compelled to build a monument to the Ustashe's Serb victims at Surmanci, while official Yugoslav history showed the Franciscans executed by Partisans at Siroki Brijeg as fascist villains.
The apparitions began at a difficult time for Yugoslavia : the stabilising force that was Tito had died the year before and the Catholic Fellowship movement was roiling red Poland, provoked by a new east EU pope, John Paul II.
The Yugoslav authorities straight away denounced reports of the visions which happened just before the fortieth anniversary of the Surmanci slaughter as a "clerical-nationalist" conspiracy cooked up by Croat extremists.
Local Franciscans quickly took command of the Medjugorje phenomenon, declaring the children's visions to be real and installing themselves as intercessors between the young "seers" and a Croat public that was clamouring for spiritual experience after many years of official state atheism.
Thousands of people were shortly gathering in Medjugorje for daily "messages" from Our Woman ; the authorities arrested a local friar and others whom they suspected of involvement in the purported hoax. Over the course of time but the cash- strapped Yugoslav authorities realized the commercial potential of Medjugorje.
By the mid-1980s, Belgrade had no issue with the daily visions or visitors but the Catholic Church did.
The Bishop of Mostar, the senior church official in the region, has for years been at loggerheads with the Franciscans over their refusal to relinquish control of certain parishes in Herzegovina, where they've been present for hundreds of years and enjoy the deep faithfulness of local people.
This dispute was raging when the visions began ; some people believe the Franciscans used them or helped invent them to guard and reinforce their position in Medjugorje.
Unlike those at Fatima and Lourdes, the Vatican hasn't recognized the providence of the Medjugorje visions. In 2009 it defrocked a previous Franciscan "spiritual director" to the idealists among claims that he exaggerated the apparitions and sired a child with a nun.
Several "disobedient" Franciscans have been expelled from the parish.
Like his predecessor Pavao Zanic, the Bishop of Mostar Ratko Peric is extremely scornful about the "visions" and the way in which the Franciscans and other groups have behaved in Medjugorje. Their striking comments on the phenomenon which suggest it is just a rewarding hoax are posted in English on the diocese site (cbismo.com).
Nevertheless the Franciscans of Herzegovina won't give up Medjugorje without a fight. They are troublesome and devoted, as everyone from the Ottomans to Bishop Peric has uncovered. During the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, Peric was abducted and beaten by Croat militiamen in a local Franciscan chapel, until UN troops and the mayor of Mostar secured his release.
The war freed another wave of ethnic cleaning in Herzegovina, much of it by members of the region's Croat majority, who flattened mosques and Orthodox churches as they drove Muslims and Serbs from their homes.
The memorial at Surmanci was blown up by Croats, plenty of whom basked in their Ustashe heritage.
A drip of travellers kept coming to Medjugorje throughout the war. Few perhaps realised that atrocities were taking place nearby, or that their Queen of Peace had been dubbed the "Ustasha Virgin" by Serbs and Muslims who saw her as a symbol of Croatian ultra-nationalism.
Medjugorje last week marked 30 years since the apparitions started and the crowds are as big than previously.
The Vatican is now examining the apparitions and the thousands of allegedly divine messages that have made Medjugorje's name.
For the church, the Franciscans, the people of Medjugorje and the idealists as well as millions of believers a great deal rests on its decision,writes tagza.com.
June 2011 Horoscope - Virgo
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