Damned Catholics

[Fake Messiah]

Covid defeated the Virgin Mary herself. The blooming religious business in Medjugorje, Bosnia, is tanking for the first time since it started in the 1980s.

Souvenir shops selling Virgin Maries, and Virgin Mary hotels are empty. People are running away from the place that they claimed healed them for a fear of getting sick.

Usually, tours are organized through individual churches and church groups. “I found tour operators running from as far away as Phoenix, Arizona who were offering package deals including airfare, accommodation, and tours led by Mirjana Soldo, one of the original six visionaries from 1981,” he explains. Not all the tour companies — international and domestic — are strictly religious. 

His most recent images show the devastating effects of the pandemic on the town’s tourism. “When I trekked up to the Apparition and Cross Hills, I only saw a handful of people compared to the hundreds or thousands I saw the previous year,” he recalls. The hotel where he stayed in 2019 was also closed. “I tried to get in touch with the owners but they might have been out of the country themselves. The previous summer they were completely booked up, as were most of the hotels in town — and there really are a lot of them.” But beyond the obvious lack of people, St. Oegger describes a noticeable “loss of energy”.

https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/...ghost-town