Medjugorje

Medjugorje, whose name means "between mountains", was for centuries a small farming village in the karst of western Herzegovina. In 1882 the railway between Mostar and the Dalmatian coast was built with a station in the hamlet of Šurmanci, connecting the area to the network, and in 1892 the Bishop of Mostar established the Catholic parish of Saint James. In 1934 the parish completed its Stations of the Cross with a twelve-metre crucifix on the mountain of Križevac. The present parish church was consecrated in 1969.

Everything changed on 24 June 1981, when six local children reported seeing the Virgin Mary on Crnica hill in the hamlet of Bijakovići. Crowds soon gathered, and the authorities of communist Yugoslavia reacted: pilgrims were forbidden from coming, donations were seized by the police and access to what became known as Apparition Hill was largely blocked. In the last years before the break-up of Yugoslavia, travel by pilgrims was no longer hindered, and the village grew into one of Europe's best-known Marian shrines.

The Catholic Church long held back from approving the pilgrimage. Pope Francis sent a special envoy in 2017, and in 2019 the Vatican authorised officially organised pilgrimages without confirming any supernatural origin. On 19 September 2024 the Holy See granted Medjugorje a nihil obstat, encouraging devotion to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace, while making no declaration that the reported apparitions took place and telling believers to come for her rather than for the alleged seers.

Life in Medjugorje revolves around the parish and the pilgrims. The six reported visionaries are now adults, some believers hold that the apparitions are still happening, and believers call the Virgin by the title Queen of Peace. Pilgrims attend services at the church of St James and the outdoor altar, pray the rosary on the way up Apparition Hill and follow the Stations of the Cross up Križevac.

The village is Europe's third most important apparition site, with more than a million visitors a year and an estimated 30 million since 1981. Pilgrim groups come from around the world, and the annual Medjugorje International Youth Festival, Mladifest, founded in 1989 by two Franciscan priests, is held from 1 to 6 August; in 2019, the first Vatican-sanctioned pilgrimage brought about 60,000 young Catholics from 97 countries.

The local community is Croat and Catholic, and the Franciscans run the parish. Manners follow from the village's purpose: modest dress, quiet on the hills and respect for those at prayer.

The 2013 census counted 2,265 people in Medjugorje, all Croats. The parish also takes in the neighbouring villages of Bijakovići, Vionica, Miletina and Šurmanci, and the village is part of the municipality of Čitluk in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton. Its streets are lined with pensions, restaurants and souvenir shops, and in the main seasons pilgrim groups fill them from morning until the evening services.

Pilgrimage is the economy. With approximately a million visitors a year, Medjugorje has the most overnight stays in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and more than a thousand beds in hotels and hostels serve the pilgrims, along with family pensions, restaurants, souvenir shops and tour operators. Around the village, Čitluk municipality has the largest vineyards in the country, and wine-growing remains an important livelihood.

The year follows the church calendar and the pilgrim seasons: busy at Easter, the June anniversary, the youth festival and on 15 August, quiet in the wet winter months. Outside the main seasons, the village returns to the slower pace of the surrounding Herzegovinian countryside.

Medjugorje eats as western Herzegovina does, with Mediterranean flavours alongside the Ottoman-influenced dishes of the rest of the country. Pensions serve pilgrims hearty home cooking — stuffed peppers, sarma, grah, a bean soup, and goulash — and grilled meat, including ćevapi, minced meat grilled and served in flatbread with chopped onion and kajmak, a creamy dairy product similar to clotted cream.

Pies of thin, flaky dough, from burek to sirnica with cheese and zeljanica with spinach, are everyday fare, and sweets such as baklava and tufahija, a whole stewed apple stuffed with walnuts, are sold in the village.

Wine is the local pride. The area around Čitluk and Medjugorje is the heart of Herzegovina's wine production, and its two main grapes are Žilavka, a white known for its freshness and acidity, often aged in oak to give fuller, nutty wines, and Blatina, a red with spice and coffee flavours that cannot pollinate itself and is always planted alongside other varieties. Bosnian coffee, made from very finely ground beans and served unfiltered, and rakija round off a meal.