{"id":787,"date":"2008-07-07T15:40:05","date_gmt":"2008-07-07T15:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/07\/catholic-visionary-draws-thous.php"},"modified":"2008-07-07T15:40:05","modified_gmt":"2008-07-07T15:40:05","slug":"catholic-visionary-draws-thous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/catholic-visionary-draws-thous","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Visionary Draws Thousands to Central Alabama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Greg Garrison<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Religion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\n(RNS) Thousands of pilgrims from across the country visited central Alabama for a five-day prayer retreat focused on a woman who has reported daily sightings of the Virgin Mary since 1981.<br \/>\nMarija Lunetti, from Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia, reported daily visions while pilgrims gathered outside the house where she has been staying in Shelby County, Ala., about 25 miles south of Birmingham.<br \/>\nOn Thursday (July 3) and Friday, she reported visions at 10 p.m. in a field amid pilgrims gathered under a pine tree. Lunetti said the Virgin Mary appeared to her and offered blessings for everyone in the crowd.<br \/>\nAlthough no one else could see the apparitions, many in the crowd believed Lunetti sees miraculous visions.<br \/>\n&#8220;It&#8217;s an overwhelming experience,&#8221; said Judith Rojas of Salt Lake City, who came to Birmingham Tuesday and left Saturday. &#8220;She&#8217;s here. The Virgin Mary is visiting us from heaven. How can you comprehend that?&#8221;<br \/>\nLunetti&#8217;s home village of Medjugorje, in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina, has drawn millions of pilgrims since Lunetti and five other youths began reporting the visions 27 years ago.<br \/>\nTerry Colafrancesco, the founder of Caritas of Birmingham, promotes the visions of Medjugorje and sponsored Lunetti last week. Lunetti was seeking medical treatment at St. Vincent&#8217;s Birmingham for a broken collarbone and shoulder injured in a skiing accident earlier this year in Italy, where she now lives.<br \/>\nLunetti may stay several more weeks in Birmingham to continue seeking therapy and may eventually undergo surgery, Colafrancesco said.<br \/>\nThe Catholic Church has not ruled on the validity of the Medjugorje visions, and the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham prohibits Mass at Caritas, although it allowed a special daily Mass for visiting pilgrims at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church.<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nCopyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Greg Garrison Religion News Service (RNS) Thousands of pilgrims from across the country visited central Alabama for a five-day prayer retreat focused on a woman who has reported daily sightings of the Virgin Mary since 1981. Marija Lunetti, from Medjugorje in the former Yugoslavia, reported daily visions while pilgrims gathered outside the house where&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Catholic Visionary Draws Thousands to Central Alabama<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/07\/catholic-visionary-draws-thous\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Catholic Visionary Draws Thousands to Central Alabama\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Greg Garrison Religion News Service (RNS) Thousands of pilgrims from across the country visited central Alabama for a five-day prayer retreat focused on a woman who has reported daily sightings of the Virgin Mary since 1981. 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A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}