It is quite exceptional, but due to “persistent doubts” the dicastery for the doctrine of faith now announces in a press release what was decided in 1974 concerning the numerous (56) Amsterdam visions of Ida Peerdeman from the period 1945-1959. These are not recognized in any way, as the decision shows. ‘proof of non-supernaturality’. Those exact words matter; as it would have been said ‘non-status of supernaturality’this would mean that there is “insufficient evidence”, which still leaves some room for manoeuvre. But that is not what it says. There is no evidence, the Vatican then stated, confirmed by Pope Paul VI.
Great pilgrimage church
The disclosure of these records seems to be primarily a signal for the foundation ‘Lourdes aan de Amstel’, a church in the south of Amsterdam where devotion is concentrated around the apparitions to Peerdeman. The foundation has long been campaigning for a large pilgrimage church in the Amsterdam Rai and a month and a half ago distributed a message in which it carelessly referred to the supernatural “Marian apparitions in Amsterdam”.
At the end of 2020, the question of recognition seemed to have been settled, when the new bishop Jan Hendriks of the diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam was told, following an investigation in Rome, that the apparitions would not be recognised. His predecessor, Bishop Punt, had declared in 2002 that the Marian apparitions were authentic. But that has been reversed. The prayer given by ‘The Lady of All Nations’ to Ida Peerdeman during the alleged apparitions can remain said and the annual days of prayer around the ‘Lady of All Nations’ are also permitted, provided that no connection to the apparitions is made yourself.
‘You are wrong’
Mathé Reijnierse, founder of the Lourdes aan de Amstel Foundation, is not surprised by Rome’s message. “It is not a blow either, because they are wrong. I am a very faithful Catholic, but the argument is always the principle of authority: ‘because Rome says so’. But they do not provide any justification.”
The prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, ended the message on Peerdeman’s visions with the somewhat cryptic phrase: ‘This is announced so that the holy People of God and its pastors can draw the appropriate consequences from it. ‘ Reynierse also does not know what those “appropriate consequences” might be. Above all, he sees a great contradiction. “They say ‘it is false’, but at the same time devotion and prayer are allowed to continue. Of course, Rome does not want to prohibit that because then many people would rebel. But it is incomprehensible that we are faced with this.”
Last May, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith tightened its rules for the recognition of miracles. But it does give the “green light” if “there are no obstacles” (‘no obstacles’) appears to be for the devotion of the Catholic faithful. Evidently the Vatican does not want to discourage devotion and pilgrimage to special places.
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