Rome rejects claims of Marian apparitions in suburban Surrey

BY SIMON CALDWELL
THE VATICAN has dismissed the claims of a British woman who says she has been visited in her garden by the Blessed Virgin Mary for more than 20 years.
Patricia De Menezes says the apparition has been appearing to her beneath a pine tree at her home in Surbiton, Surrey, since 1984.
She claims she has received a divine message that the Catholic Church must proclaim aborted babies to be martyrs. She has also founded the Community of Divine Innocence, which has about 3,000 members in 43 countries, many coming from the pro-life movement.
But the Vatican has now ruled that her claims are “highly questionable” and has refused to approve the community’s statutes.
Archbishop Angelo Amato, the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), announced the decision in a letter to Archbishop Kevin McDonald of Southwark, the diocese in which Mrs De Menezes lives.
He said Mrs De Menezes’s claims were “exaggerated” and “hysterical”.
He said inappropriate words and phrases had been attributed to Jesus, problematic demands made over the status of aborted children, and “unusually violent and threatening language” used in attacks on Church authorities.
“Given the supposed revelations which ground the spirituality of the Community of Divine Innocence are highly questionable, it follows that the community’s spirituality is flawed at its root,” said Archbishop Amato.
“Because this spirituality thoroughly animates the community’s proposed constitution, it cannot be approved.” The archbishop specifically took issue with the message that Mrs De Menezes claims to have received about the “martyrdom of all the innocent children deliberately killed before birth”.
“A martyr is someone who bears witness to Christ,” he said. “If the victims of abortion were to qualify for martyrdom it would then seem that all victims of any moral evil should be likewise deemed martyrs.” The letter from Archbishop Amato was dated July 16 but was publicly released by the Southwark archdiocese only on Saturday.
Archbishop McDonald said that the ruling meant there is “no ecclesiastical approbation for Catholics to meet as the group known as Divine Innocence”.
He said: “I am aware that many devout people, deeply committed to the pro-life movement, have become involved with the Divine Innocence. I wish to encourage them in their work and prayer but in view of the observations of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, this must no longer be in the context of the organisation or spirituality of the Divine Innocence.” The Divine Innocence community remained defiant, however. “As loyal Catholics we will do all we can to communicate accurately the Way of Christ's Divine Innocence to the authorities of the Catholic Church,” a spokesman said. “We recognise and are grateful to the Church for her uncompromising stance against the evil of abortion. It is our desire that it considers the martyrdom of these children as a witness to the truth of the right to life of unborn human beings.” Mrs De Menezes, 67, a freelance jewellery designer, has said previously that her supernatural experiences began when she heard the words “I am the bread of life” while cycling near her home.
She later said she saw visions of Mary, Jesus and St Joseph in her garden and was catechised by them.
The mother of three – born Patricia Adamson and raised a Protestant – later converted to Catholicism. She claims that the Virgin Mary continues to appear to her on a daily basis.
The Archdiocese of Southwark examined her claims in 2001 and rejected them. Mrs De Menezes then sought approval of the community’s statutes from the Holy See. The CDF conducted its investigation at the request of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
The CDF found that Mrs De Menezes’s supposed revelations and writings demonstrated a “litigious and dissident spirit”.
It cited as an example her ranking of the Catholic hierarchy, who she said were “unwilling to claim [the souls of] the aborted”, alongside abortionists and pro-abortion politicians. Also, the CDF criticised the “colloquial chitchat” that characterised conversations Mrs De Menezes said she had with Our Lord.
It gave the following instance as an example: “Patricia De Menezes: ‘Lord, the Way of Divine Innocence does not seem to be what the young want.’ “Jesus: ‘What do the young want?’ “Patricia De Menezes: ‘Excitement.’ “Jesus: ‘I can give them enough excitement to give them a heart attack!’ ” The refusal to endorse the claims of Mrs De Menezes comes amid mounting concern in the Vatican at the rise of hundreds of cases of socalled private revelations around the world.
Pope Benedict XVI sees the boom in such phenomena as a risk to the unity of the Church because in many cases Catholics are lost to sects with charismatic leaders who are at odds with the local bishops.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect of the CDF, he promised an “exemplary pastoral response” to the problem, interpreted by observers to mean a crackdown on mystical seers.
Within months of his election in 2005 he suspended Fr Gino Burresi – a Vatican official who claimed to have the wounds of Christ in his body – and weeks later the CDF denounced the claims of Ida Peerdeman, a Dutch woman who said she received messages from an apparition of the Madonna.
Last week the Vatican excommunicated members of the Army of Mary, a sect in Canada which follows MariePaule Giguère, a woman who said she was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary.