Vandals Deface Virgin Mary Statues at Medjugorje Shrine
Vandals desecrated Virgin Mary statues and burned an outdoor altar at Bosnia's Medjugorje pilgrimage site days before 50,000 young Catholics were expected to arrive for an annual festival.
Police received reports at 4:30am on July 28 that a statue in the hamlet of Bijakovići had been damaged and defaced with graffiti, according to Brussels Signal. A fire was called in thirty minutes later at an outdoor altar located behind St James Church.
Ilijana Milos, spokeswoman for the Herzegovina-Neretva canton interior ministry, confirmed that officers had secured both crime scenes and launched an on-site investigation.
Local media published images showing the statue on Podbrdo—known as Apparition Hill—with its face, hands, and chest smeared in black paint. The words “Devil in a skirt” were scrawled across the pedestal. A second statue at the nearby Blue Cross site was vandalized in the same manner. Banners left at both locations carried messages in English and Polish attacking the six individuals who claim to have received messages from the Virgin Mary since 1981, known locally as visionaries.
Security footage broadcast by local outlets captured a man approaching the outdoor altar in the early morning hours carrying a canister. The footage shows him dousing the area before igniting it.
The Medjugorje parish office expressed deep sorrow over the vandalism and said repair work had already begun. It urged believers to respond through prayer, fasting, and forgiveness.
Despite the attack, the parish confirmed that the 37th International Youth Festival—known as Mladifest—would proceed as planned from August 1 to 6. Organizers anticipated between 50,000 and 60,000 participants.
Medjugorje: A Site of Devotion and Controversy
Medjugorje, located approximately 140 kilometers southwest of Sarajevo, attracts more than one million visitors annually. Six young people reported seeing the Virgin Mary there on June 24, 1981, and the site has since become one of the most debated locations in contemporary Catholic practice.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document titled The Queen of Peace on September 19, 2024, authorizing public devotion at the shrine. However, the Vatican stopped short of declaring whether the reported apparitions were supernatural in origin.
Rising Wave of Anti-Christian Attacks Across Europe
The vandalism comes as incidents targeting Christian sites have surged across the continent. The Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe documented 2,211 anti-Christian hate crimes in 2024, including 94 arson attacks—nearly double the figure from the previous year.
In March, the European Parliament formally used the term “Christianophobia” in a resolution for the first time, highlighting that the European Commission has not appointed a coordinator to address the phenomenon. Bosnia and Herzegovina has held EU candidate status since December 2022.
With information from Brussels Signal
