On 28, 2016, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) published an article, which gave a comprehensive history of the 70-year-old Mediatrix issue entitled “The Curious Case of the Lipa Marian Apparitions.” This response aims to fill in gaps in that article and to react to issues raised.
CNA armchair journalist makes serious allegations
Michael O’Neill, a “Catholic miracle researcher” interviewed by CNA, “said that while it is not known for sure, there are a few reasons that the Holy See may be hesitant to declare the apparitions as supernatural. One of these reasons may be because Sr. Teresita’s first mystical experience was actually an encounter with the devil.”
That “Sr. Teresita’s first mystical experience was actually an encounter with the devil” is an unfair remark by O’Neill, a gross insinuation fraught with ambiguous implications, considering many saints had encounters with the devil, such as St. Therese of the Flower.
“There has always been the question of whether the devil was disguised in further apparitions,” O’Neill said, another ambiguous serious insinuation that the Mediatrix was the work of the devil.
O’Neill should come to the Philippines and get first-hand data and interviews, instead of making serious armchair insinuations. This author is offering to introduce him to the people who can provide primary data, if he decides to take a trip to Lipa.
There are many items in the CNA article that are sadly derogatory to the Virgin.
Investigation Team Reportedly Coerced to Change their Findings
In 1951, the Vatican ordered Bishop Rufino Santos (later a cardinal) to form a team of eight Filipino Bishops to investigate the Mediatrix apparitions. The Vatican reported that the result of that investigation was that the Mediatrix apparitions were not of divine origin.
CNA, however, wrote, “On 11 February 1990, the nephew of Bishop Cesar M. Guerrero, one of the signers of the 1951 negative judgment, swore in an affidavit that his uncle signed the document under duress and was a believer in the authenticity of the apparitions.” That affidavit has been missing through the decades. “Where are these affidavits?” CNA wrote.
In the absence of the affidavit, we still cannot easily sweep under the rug Guerrero’s serious allegation. Perhaps some of Guerrero’s relatives who were at his death bed are still alive, and must be interviewed. The other bishops confirmed the Guerrero allegation, many of them dead by now. Again, no affidavits, but there may still be witnesses alive today.
Pope Pius XII Declaration of Mediatrix as being a hoax invalid and non-existent
In 1950, Pope Pius XII allegedly declared that the Mediatrix apparitions were a hoax, not of divine origin. But the declaration was not registered in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, making it invalid and non-existent, according to Canon Law. Yet, the Vatican declared them a hoax “with finality.”
Since all the cardinals in the 1950s, who claimed Pope Pius XII made the declaration, are dead, it is all now a matter of historical records. Mediatrix devotees argued that it was possible that those dead cardinals took it upon themselves to make their own unilateral declarations, using the name of Pius XII.
We will never know. Canon Law prevails that says the Pius XII declaration is indeed invalid and non-existent. This means that for 70 years, all Vatican orders banning Mediatrix devotions had been based on nothing, a bizarre event in Church history. The Vatican had no reply to this claim.
Anti-Pope Anti-Mediatrix Cardinal Mueller
In 2015, Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller was the Prefect of the CDF, the Vatican office that declared the Mediatrix apparition was of “no supernatural origin.”
Müller ordered a systematic suppression of the Mediatrix, forcing the entire Philippine Clergy into silence under threat of excommunication or exile. (Note. A later survey revealed that almost all bishops nationwide believed in the Mediatrix.) Through the decades, several pro-Mediatrix Lipa Bishops were exiled or forced to resign.
On orders of Müller, all evidence vital to the investigation of the apparitions were ordered destroyed or hidden, including the rose petals which healed many devotees (remnants still hidden somewhere), Mediatrix statues, the diary of visionary Sr. Teresing (she wrote a second diary =
https://eastwindjournals.com/2021/07/19/diary-of-mediatrix-visionary-sr-teresing/).