Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
October 24, 2001
Medjugorje message is conversion, priest says
Former Medjugorje pastor attributes fall of communism to prayer
By Alwen Bledsoe
On Sept. 11 Father Tomislav Pervan, O.F.M., saw the collapse of the World Trade Centers from the balcony of a building three miles from the site of the attacks.
Now provincial of his order of Franciscan friars in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovenia, he is best known for pastoring St. James in Medjugorje during the early years of the reported Marian apparitions there. He was visiting other friars in New York as a part of his duties as provincial. Later that week, he said a Mass for four Croatians still missing in the World Trade Centers.
This is hardly Father Pervan's first dramatic witness of war and carnage. No more a stranger to war than to what he considers the miracle that revitalized his country's faith, Father Pervan witnessed thousands of conversions as well as the persecutions of a waning Communist regime in then-Yugoslavia before and while he pastored St. James, Medjugorje, from 1982-1988. And even after the fall of communism his country was literally torn apart by the civil war in Bosnia.
Father Pervan said he became convinced of the authenticity of six children's reported Marian visions due to innumerable conversions as thousands of pilgrims flocked to the site as early as five days after the children said they had met Mary on Apparition Hill.
Originally, said Father Pervan: "I was very hard on them. I told them, `Don't joke. It's not a time for joking.'"
Their persistence, though, continued.
"Slowly, maybe 10 days after meeting them, I was totally convinced that the kids are not lying," he said. "They are talking to the police and a psychiatrist and they are driven away from it, but they were still, `We see.'"
The popularity of the visions threatened the Communist government, he said. Father Pervan's close friend, Franciscan Father Jozo Zovko, pastor of St. James in 1981 when the apparitions began, was beaten and subsequently imprisoned for a year-and-a-half by Communist authorities when he refused to silence the child visionaries.
Though a communist-controlled media frenzy denounced the visions at Medjugorje, according to Father Pervan, the intended deterrent had the opposite effect: spreading the news of the reported apparitions and bringing more pilgrims.
Father Pervan believes the visions were given to the small Croatian village of Medjugorje because of its key location in communist Eastern Europe. Though barred from traveling to Western countries, pilgrims could travel to Medjugorje, and though there were few housing accommodations, and little in the way of running water, electricity or bathroom facilities, people came and came and came, he said.
Calling the visions "God's voice for our times," he said that even young people would travel to the seashore on buses.
"They skipped the sea and came to Medjugorje and they lived in very poor conditions," he said. "We gave them thousands and thousand of rosaries and Bibles and they smuggled it to Hungary and to Czechoslovakia. It was a sign to us that there was something happening. It was like yeast in this country and then it was a weakening of the communist regime. ... It fell not by tanks, but by candles and prayers."
"It was a UN (United Nations) in prayer and love and worship," he said, saying that people traveled from all over the globe to Medjugorje.
Though the Vatican has not officially announced the authenticity of the Medjugorje apparitions and thus disallows dioceses from organizing official pilgrimages to Medjugorje, it allows individuals and lay groups to make pilgrimages and to be accompanied by a priest to care for their spiritual needs.
Denver residents Sam and Elizabeth Novak are two of the millions who have journeyed to Medjugorje, and in their 17 trips there, they have seen miraculous healings and conversions. They met Father Pervan in 1987 during their first trip to Medjugorje.
In their 17 visits to the war-torn area, said the Novaks, they have gone not only to receive from Medjugorje, but also to bring medical and dental supplies collected by the Rocky Mountain Marian Center to the refugees and orphans of the war. Early in October they delivered $12,500 to the area. Though they do the delivering, said Elizabeth Novak, others are far more instrumental in the relief efforts.
Though the Novaks and Father Pervan all testify to seeing, in Sam Novak's words, "physical and spiritual healings constantly," Father Pervan added, "If you are healed in your spirit, in your soul, in your heart, that's the main issue."
Sam Novak agreed.
"That's the main message of Medjugorje: the conversion of your heart," he said.
In Denver Oct. 9-12, Father Pervan spoke at Nativity of Our Lord in Broomfield. He also was interviewed by The Catholic Hour for a program to air 7 a.m. Oct. 28 and 1 p.m. Nov. 2 on KBDI Channel 12. Father Pervan told the Register that he wanted to speak to Americans living in the specter of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"There is a very, very good example in St. Augustine's life," he said. "He was bishop in North Africa and the message was brought to him that the vandals had destroyed Rome, destroyed everything. He told his flocks, `Don't weep after all, don't cry, because men are raising up and building and destroying. God's city is not a human city.'
"Jesus told us the kingdom of God is among us," he continued later. "It's still here. It's like a small seed of mustard ... like an embryo in a woman. ... There's a seed and that seed ... should grow up, spread through us, not without us."
Contact Us
