PROSPECT HEIGHTS — While the Vatican has acknowledged the “abundant spiritual fruits” experienced by people visiting and praying at the site of reported Marian apparitions at Medjugorje, it has yet to sign off on their authenticity. Still, local devotees regularly visit this small town in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they believe that Mary, Mother of Jesus, has regularly appeared to a half-dozen “visionaries” since they were children in 1981. They said she identified herself as “The Queen of Peace.”

An estimated 30 million pilgrims have visited Medjugorje since the first apparitions, according to media reports. Among local devotees is Father Bryan Carney, longtime chaplain of Flushing Hospital Medical Center. Father Carney, 76, has made 34 trips to Medjugorje and has guided dozens of pilgrims there from throughout the Diocese of Brooklyn and the U.S.

He credited his first visit to Medjugorje for affirming his choice to become a priest while in his late 50s. “I came back and said, ‘It doesn’t matter if people don’t think I’m smart enough or holy enough,’ ” Father Carney said. “I said, ‘If God wants me, I’ll become a priest.’ ”

Medjugorje: The Queen of Peace

The Vatican’s 20-page document titled “The Queen of Peace” was released on Sept. 19 by its Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). Pope Francis, on Aug. 28, approved the document’s forward.
“The time has come to conclude a long and complex history that has surrounded the spiritual phenomena of Medjugorje,” the foreword states. An accompanying synthesis states that the approval for devotion to Medjugorje resulted from “the abundant spiritual fruits” received by people visiting the sanctuary of the Queen of Peace.

Still, the acknowledgment comes “without making a declaration on the alleged supernatural character of Marian apparitions,” according to the document. Thus, DDF officials urged pilgrims to carefully discern messages from the original visionaries to ensure they align with the Church.

“Some people believe that certain messages contain contradictions or are connected with the desires or interests of the alleged visionaries or others,” the document states.

‘I Was Struggling’

Father Carney’s Medjugorje discernment began nearly 20 years ago when he was “not in a good place spiritually.” It was a stressful time, considering he was about to enter his fifth year of seminary as a transitional deacon.

At age 58, he was a “late vocation,” having spent much of his adult life in the U.S. Air Force and, later, as a construction worker and steamfitter. “I was struggling,” said Father Carney. “I wasn’t sure I was holy enough, or smart enough, or young enough. I had all the doubts that the devil was putting in my mind, confusing me so late in the game, and I wasn’t sure what to do.”

A fellow seminarian suggested he seek clarity by visiting Medjugorje to pray. Father Carney took the advice and soon found himself cloaked with a spiritual reassurance that he should become a priest. Father Carney has scheduled his Medjugorje visits around his dual chaplaincies with Flushing Hospital and for a New York Guard unit, the Veteran Corps of Artillery.

A Book From a Prayer

Among his regular fellow pilgrims was Marty Ingram, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel. Ingram and Father Carney became friends while serving together in the New York Guard. Ingram also served as chief of the volunteer Breezy Point fire department during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

In his book, “Flood, Fire, and a Superstorm,” he wrote about the disaster. He described how his department’s fire trucks wouldn’t start because flood water filled the engine compartments, but later sprang to life after the firefighters prayed the “Hail Mary.” Ingram, a former Air Force rescue helicopter pilot, died in June. Previously, he told The Tablet how he struggled to get his book published, but everything fell
into place after he prayed to Mary in Medjugorje. The book was published in 2022 in time for Sandy’s 10th anniversary.

A Lighter Load

Luz Foronda, a member of Queen of Peace Parish in Flushing, and her husband, Julius, visited Medjugorje with Father Carney in 2019. She is a registered nurse who works with Father Carney at the hospital in Flushing. Foronda described climbing the rocky Apparition Hill, where the visionaries say they first encountered Mary. She prayed for protection on the rugged rocks and felt that the Blessed Mother helped ease her trek up and down the mountain.

But Foronda said she was the most spiritually connected while saying the rosary back in the village. Al- though she was with a group, she started feeling alone until she felt the loving presence of an unseen being. “You feel like somebody’s embracing you, that somebody’s hearing you and sitting next to you,” Foronda said. “It makes you feel good and that the load you’ve been carrying is lighter.”

While Father Carney needs no convincing that the Medjugorje apparitions are real, he has no problem with Vatican officials taking their time to investigate, noting that hundreds of Marian claims throughout history and all over the world were proven false. “That’s exactly what the Vatican has to look at,” Father Carney said. “They have to be more critical than anybody. The Church has everything to lose if they ever said something was original, and then it turned out to be unoriginal. You could throw away every vision that ever was in 2,000 years.”