"It happened late in June of '81.  Medjugorje means "between the mountains," and one day two teenage girls were walking and talking on the path that leads to Mount Podbrdo, now known far and wide as "Apparition Hill."  Medjugorje is a stunning place but hardly a pretty one; its peaks are gray, rough and slaggy.  On that day, the girls were strolling in the craggy dreariness when, suddenly, in the distance, they perceived a woman with an ethereal glow emanating from her.  She was not standing upon the ground but floating just above it. "Gospa" one girl exclaimed:  "Our Lady." The girls hurried off, stunned.

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     They came back with some friends, and the vision appeared again, with a baby in her arms.  The young people returned again and then again, and because they did, the six of them are known today as "the visionaries": Ivanka Ivankovic, 15 years old in 1981:  Mirjana Dragicevic, 16, Ivan Dragicevic, 16 as well, but not Mirjana's twin (none of the visionaries are related); Vicka Ivankovic, 16, and destined to become the most famous of the group; Marija Pavlovic, 16; and Jakov Colo, only 10.  On their  first visit  as a group, they approached the woman they were now sure was the Virgin and fell to their knees at her feet.  They workshipped. Mother Mary spoke to them.  She stressed that she wanted the young people to pray daily, to fast, to say the rosary and to find inner peace.

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     ...Since then they have been condemned and celebrated, prodded and poked, monitored by machines, interrogated by priests, police, psychologists, reporters and pilgrims.  And yet ten years after their  first walk up Apparition Hill, only one fact remains beyond dispute:  Every evening, no matter where they are, whether in Medjugorje or in another country, the visionaries fall to their knees, gaze toward heaven and moved their lips in mute appeal to an image no one else can see."...

        

             By Robert Sullivan

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