Croatia: Through historic suffering, a deep love for the Virgin

For many travelers, Croatia is a destination desirable for its beautiful coastline and architecture, but for Catholics, it holds even more – a rich history of devotion to the faith and particularly to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Pilgrims who travel to the Balkan nation Sept. 25-Oct. 7 on the Legatus-sponsored private yacht cruise on the Adriatic Sea will discover this for themselves as they visit several holy sites — including the Cathedral of St. Domnius in Split, the Benedictine Monastery on St. Mary’s Island, and Medjugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina on the Croatian border.

“During the long history of our people, the only thing that never changed was our Catholic faith,” said Father Antonio Musa, pastor of St. Jerome Croatian Parish in Chicago and a member of the Croatian Franciscan Custody of the Holy Family. “We stuck to it, and it kept us going.”
 
Today, 86.3 percent of Croatia’s people are Catholic, placing the nation in the top-10 list of countries with the greatest percentage of Catholics.

The Catholic faith particularly is reflected today in the number of Marian shrines the Croatian people have built in their country and in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. During Croatia’s years of affliction at the hands of stronger nations and global politics, devotion to Mary sustained its citizens. “The suffering people recognized in her the example of faith and a powerful intercessor in many trials,” said Fr. Musa.

Indeed, while celebrating Mass on the Feast of the Assumption in 2019, Cardinal Josip Bozanic, archbishop of Zagreb, said that the Croatian Christian identity is deeply marked by Marian devotion.
 
The Black Madonna

Among the most popular of the Croatian sites dedicated to Mary is Our Lady of Marija Bistrica, which draws more than a million pilgrims annually. The largest Marian shrine in Croatia, Marija Bistrica is the home of a famous Gothic wooden Black Madonna statue that has been associated with many miracles.
 
The statue was first enshrined at Vinski Vrh in 1499 and then moved and buried secretly under the parish church in Bistrica in 1545 by a priest seeking to protect it from an ongoing Turkish threat. However, after the priest died without telling anyone the location of the statue, it was not found until 1588, and then only after a mysterious light was seen coming from the Bistrica church. The statue was discovered the next day and placed on the church altar.

In 1650, during another Turkish incursion, the statue was hidden in a wall behind the church’s main altar. It was uncovered in 1684 and placed on a side altar. The day after it was found, a girl was healed from paralysis, and as word spread, pilgrims began coming to Bistrica. Pope St. John Paul II visited the site in 1998 when he beatified Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, former archbishop of Zagreb.
 
‘The Great Lady’ of Sinj

Other significant Marian sites in Croatia include Our Lady of Sinj, Our Lady of Trsat, the chapel in Rogoznica, and Our Lady of Sanctuary in Aljmas.
 
The Church of the Miraculous Lady of Sinj, built from 1699 to 1712 in rural Dalmatia, is a major pilgrimage site for the Aug. 15 Feast of the Assumption, known as Velika Gospa, or “The Great Lady.” On the feast day, a painting of the Miraculous Madonna of Sinj is taken out of the church and processed through the streets.
 
In 1715, Sinj had been targeted for capture by Turkish armies, but the people prayed through the night of Aug. 14 before a painting of Mary and asked the Blessed Mother to intervene. The next morning, a woman believed to be the Blessed Virgin appeared in the sky. The Turkish soldiers were forced to retreat when they became ill and were unable to cross the river into Sinj, never to return.

Grateful for the victory, which they attributed to the “Lady of Sinj,” the Croatian people rebuilt and enlarged their church, and it became a prominent shrine.

Trsat, Rogoznica, Aljmas 

The Shrine of Our Lady of Trsat on the north Adriatic coast dates to the late 13th century and is the site of a three-day celebration each June in honor of the city’s patron saint, Vitus, an early Sicilian martyr. According to legend, angels brought the Nazareth home of the Blessed Virgin to a plateau in Trsat in 1291, but moved it to Loreto, Italy, in 1294. By then, however, a shrine had been established at the Croatian site.
 
So, as a consolation, Blessed Urban V gave the faithful a painting of Mary and the infant Jesus that had been attributed to St. Luke. The painting is kept in the Franciscan monastery treasury next to the shrine church, where a replica hangs over the tabernacle of the main altar.
 
In the tourist village of Rogoznica on Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, a 300-year-old tradition continues every July when a painting of Our Lady is transported by boat and then by procession on land from the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to a small Marian chapel at the tip of the Gradina Peninsula.

In 1722, according to legend, a fisherman on the Adriatic Sea saw an unusual light on the peninsula and went to investigate. There, perched on a rock, he found a sacred painting depicting the Virgin Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth. Three times the fisherman brought the painting home with him, but each time it somehow returned to the same spot. The people of Rogoznica decided to build a chapel there, and the annual procession began a couple years later.

 In Aljmas in eastern Croatia, the contemporary Shrine of Our Lady of Sanctuary recalls a time in 1704 when Jesuits who had fled a Calvinist takeover of their church sought shelter for a statue of Mary by placing it in the church there. The church later was destroyed and was rebuilt after the Croatian War of Independence. In 1998, the statue was returned to the shrine, which now draws 200,000 pilgrims annually. During his third visit to the country in 2003, Pope St. John Paul II placed a golden crown on the statue.
 
Besides the country’s more famous sites, Fr. Musa said, there are churches, chapels, and shrines dedicated to Mary wherever Croatians live. For example, in Chicago, which has been called “the second Croatian capital” because of the number of Croatians who reside there, the people have been celebrating Our Lady of Sinj for 117 years on the Feast of the Assumption with a special procession and Mass in her honor.
 
“Devotion to Our Blessed Mother, Gospa,” Fr. Musa affirmed, “is in the core of who we are.”

Medjugorje: For many, faith persists despite controversy

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the most famous Croatian shrine is in Medjugorje, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to six visionaries since 1981. It remains a popular pilgrimage site for people of all faiths even though its messages have not been approved by the Catholic Church.
 
The six original visionaries, then children, are all now married and raising families. The messages they reportedly received speak of the need for conversion, prayer and fasting, and included secrets related to future events.
 
Even amid some controversy surrounding the authenticity of the apparitions, many who have visited the site have reported experiencing conversions and even miraculous healings.
 
Visitors to Medjugorje, situated just two miles from the Croatian border, typically attend Mass and devotions at St. James Church and visit Apparition Hill, where a white statue of the Virgin Mary marks the spot on which the visionaries claim to have first seen Mary.
 
The Legatus-sponsored excursion Sept. 25-Oct. 7 will also visit Bijakovici, home village of all six visionaries, and Medjugorje’s Mount Krizevac, or Cross Mountain, where villagers in 1933 built a 29-foot-high cross containing a relic of the true cross.
 
Father Antonio Musa, pastor of St. Jerome Croatian Parish in Chicago, said most people do not realize that Medjugorje is not in Croatia because of its proximity to the border and because it is almost 100 percent Croatian and Catholic.

He said many groups visit other shrines in the area as part of their pilgrimages to Medjugorje. These include the town of Siroki Brijeg, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where 30 Franciscan friars and monks were killed in 1945 by Communist soldiers who also destroyed their monastery. A week later, seven more friars were killed in Mostar, including three from Medjugorje who had helped construct the famous cross on Cross Mountain.

A tomb containing the remains of 24 of the martyred friars is located inside the Franciscan church at Siroki Brijeg, which means, “a wide hill.”
 
From the beginning, local bishops have not affirmed a supernatural character to the alleged apparitions in Medjugorje. The Holy See has allowed pilgrimages to Medjugorje as long as neither pilgrimages nor the seers themselves present the reported apparitions as approved by the Church.