Vatican Issues New Guidance On Supposed Miracles

NBC News reports:

Supernatural events like visions of the Virgin Mary and statues weeping tears of blood have for centuries stirred the faithful — and controversy for the Catholic Church.

In the age of social media, unverified claims can spread rapidly around the globe, so on Friday the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued new guidelines radically reforming its process for evaluating faith-based phenomena.

Stressing that such incidents should be assessed very cautiously, in a document replacing rules issued in 1978, the Vatican’s doctrinal office said that bishops can completely reject an event as supernatural and take steps to ban or limit worship of fake or controversial phenomena.

Read the full article.

In a new crackdown aimed to prevent scams, hoaxes & heresies, the Vatican has updated its rules for reviewing apparitions, visions and alleged revelations.

My report on what this means for weeping statues, visions of Jesus on food & other controversies:https://t.co/dUnYdNg2L4

— Christopher White (@cwwhiteNCR) May 17, 2024

In just released document approved by Pope Francis, Vatican says any supernatural apparitions need to be approved by Pope, that would include weeping statues, and other phenomenon or scams used for the purpose of “religious marketing.” (full text) https://t.co/l5MW9jY3wq pic.twitter.com/S8Nar1jyYf

— Rich Raho (@RichRaho) May 17, 2024

The Vatican sharpened its rules for investigating supernatural events such as visions of Christ or the Virgin Mary, acknowledging that overactive imaginations and outright “lying” risked harming the faithful https://t.co/BNSW51mDeb

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) May 18, 2024

The Vatican’s doctrinal office has released new norms regarding alleged supernatural phenomena such as apparitions of Mary, weeping statues and other supposed mystical events. https://t.co/RgTmBNroQx

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 17, 2024