Only Pope Can Decide If Visions Are Divine, Say Vatican's New Rules

In a bid to crack down on scams and hoaxes, the Vatican has released new guidelines for reviewing divine apparitions and visions that state that only the Pope - the head of the Catholic church - can formally label an event as "supernatural."

The document titled "Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena" gives guidelines to bishops for investigating claims of divine visions and apparitions but clarifies that only the Vatican can decide if the claims are true.

Apparitions of the Virgin Mary and weeping statues of Jesus Christ have been reported by Catholic devotees for centuries and were often seen by the Vatican as a way of reaffirming faith among the followers of the Catholic church. However, with rising use of artificial intelligence and social media reports of just holy occurrences have left followers vulnerable to hoaxes, the document said.

"There is the possibility of believers being misled by an event that is attributed to a divine initiative but is merely the product of someone's imagination, desire for novelty, tendency to fabricate falsehoods (mythomania), or inclination toward lying," Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the head of the Vatican doctrine office, said.

While the Cardinal clarified that the document does not intend "to control or (even less) stifle the Spirit", it does warn against the use of "such phenomenon to gain “profit, power, fame, social recognition, or other personal interest or as a means of or pretext for exerting control over people or carrying out abuses”.

The new rules, have been developed over nearly six years and replace the Vatican's last directive on supernatural occurrences which was released in 1978 but made public only in 2011.

The guidelines offer a strict overview of such events and outline six potential conclusions that may be reached about them. Even the highest level of approval from the Vatican office does not express certainty about the event but permits a bishop to promote its "pastoral" value.

Over the centuries, such apparitions and visions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ have been reported across the globe leading devotees to these locations to witness the supernatural events. Fátima in Portugal, where three shpeher children saw apparitions of Mother Mary in 1917, and Lourdes in France, where devotees seek miraculous healing, have become popular pilgrimage destinations following such reports.