Medjugorje is unlike anywhere else in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Until 1981 it was a farming village lost among the vineyards of Herzegovina. That year, six young people from the village said they had seen and spoken with the Virgin Mary on a nearby hill. Word spread, pilgrims began to arrive, and within a few decades Medjugorje became one of the largest Marian pilgrimage centres in the world. It receives millions of visitors a year, on a par with places like Lourdes or Fátima, though with one important difference worth knowing about.
The heart of the place is St James' Church (Sv. Jakov), with its packed Masses in dozens of languages, its huge open-air confession area (one of the busiest in the world) and evening adoration. Two hills around it shape the spiritual geography of the shrine: Apparition Hill (Podbrdo), where the first encounter is said to have happened, and Cross Mountain (Križevac), topped by a large concrete cross from 1933. Pilgrims climb both on foot as an act of prayer and penance, often barefoot.
This practical guide presents Medjugorje respectfully and with clear information: what to see and do, how to climb the hills, how to take part in the life of the shrine and how to get there from Mostar or the Croatian coast. It's also worth knowing that in 2024 the Catholic Church recognised the spiritual fruits of the place and authorised pilgrimages, without ruling on whether the apparitions are supernatural. Whatever your own view, Medjugorje leaves an impression through the intensity of the faith it brings together.
Medjugorje's history as a place of pilgrimage begins on 24 June 1981, when six young people from the village, the so-called 'visionaries', said they had seen the Virgin Mary, whom they called 'Gospa' (Our Lady), on a hill on the outskirts. According to their testimony, the apparitions continued over the following days and years, with messages focused on peace, prayer, conversion and fasting. The news drew a growing number of pilgrims, first from the region and then from around the world, in a complicated setting: Yugoslavia was a socialist state at the time, and the war of the 1990s came later, though it did not stop the flow of the faithful. For decades the Catholic Church kept a cautious stance and continued to study the phenomenon. In September 2024, the Vatican published a document ('The Queen of Peace') that authorises and encourages pilgrimages and recognises the abundant spiritual fruits of the place, without officially declaring the apparitions supernatural. Today Medjugorje is a major international shrine that has completely transformed life in this part of Herzegovina. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The rocky, Mediterranean south of the country: Herzegovina, home of Mostar's Stari Most, the turquoise Neretva river, dervishes, vineyards and pilgrimages.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before 1981, Medjugorje (Međugorje, whose name means 'between the mountains') was an unremarkable rural village in Herzegovina, in the municipality of Čitluk, a few kilometres from Mostar. It was an area of vineyards, tobacco and limestone hills, home to Croatian Catholic farming families who lived off the land in a poor, remote setting, like so many other villages in the region.
Religious life in the area was, and still is, in the hands of the Franciscan friars. They have been in Herzegovina since Ottoman times, when for centuries they were almost the only Catholic priests serving the population under Muslim rule. The parish of Medjugorje is dedicated to St James the Apostle, patron saint of pilgrims, a detail that would later turn out to be significant. In 1969 it built a church that was surprisingly large for such a small village.
At the time, the whole region was part of socialist Yugoslavia, a one-party, officially atheist state where the authorities watched religious practice and often discouraged it. Nothing suggested that this village tucked away among the hills was about to become one of the largest pilgrimage centres in the Catholic world.
Everything changed on 24 June 1981. That day, by their own account, a group of young people from the village, aged between 10 and 16, said they had seen on a hill called Podbrdo the figure of a woman holding a child, whom they identified as the Virgin Mary. The next day some of them went back and said they saw her again. This settled the group of six Medjugorje 'visionaries' who would be at the centre of the phenomenon: Ivanka, Mirjana, Vicka, Ivan, Marija and Jakov.
According to the visionaries, the apparitions went on regularly over the following days, months and years. The figure, whom they called 'Gospa' ('Lady' in Croatian) and 'Queen of Peace', gave them messages focused on peace, conversion, prayer, fasting and penance. The news spread quickly through the area and crowds began flocking to the hill.
All this happened at a sensitive moment. The Yugoslav communist authorities were deeply suspicious of such huge religious gatherings. They questioned the visionaries and the friars, banned access to the hill and arrested some priests. Far from stopping the phenomenon, the official pressure helped make it famous, and Medjugorje began to attract attention beyond Yugoslavia's borders.
Despite the authorities' early hostility, the flow of pilgrims kept growing throughout the 1980s. The first to come were believers from Yugoslavia itself and from neighbouring Italy. Then, as the news spread across Europe and the Americas, international pilgrimages began to be organised. Within a few years Medjugorje had become a mass phenomenon that the communist authorities could no longer contain.
The village was completely transformed. The church of St James had been built large before the apparitions, and now its size proved providential for receiving the crowds. Around it sprang up guesthouses, restaurants, shops selling religious items and a whole infrastructure for welcoming visitors. A daily programme of prayer took shape, with Masses in many languages and a busy schedule of confessions that would become one of the hallmarks of the place. The two hills became established pilgrimage goals: Podbrdo, and Križevac, which is topped by a concrete cross the villagers put up in 1933.
The farming village became an international shrine that would eventually draw millions of pilgrims a year. It radically changed the economy and daily life of this part of Herzegovina and became one of the most visited religious destinations in the world.
The break-up of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian War (1992-1995) shook the whole region, Herzegovina included. Medjugorje lies in a mainly Croat area that stayed relatively clear of the heaviest fighting. It was spared the destruction suffered by nearby towns such as Mostar, but like the rest of the country it lived through the hard years of the conflict. This text covers that period briefly and refers readers to historical works for the details.
Interestingly, the war did not completely stop the pilgrimages. Visitor numbers dropped for obvious safety reasons, but many believers kept coming, and for locals and pilgrims alike the message of peace linked to the place took on a special meaning amid the conflict tearing through the Balkans. It was during these years that the Blue Cross, a place of prayer at the foot of the hill, gained importance, because climbing to the top of Podbrdo was hard to do safely.
The Dayton Agreement, signed in 1995, ended the war. As stability returned, Medjugorje grew strongly again as a pilgrimage centre and soon matched and then passed its pre-war visitor numbers.
For decades the Catholic Church's approach to Medjugorje has been one of study and caution. Unlike other established Marian shrines, the Medjugorje apparitions, which the visionaries say continue in some cases to this day, caused debate within the Church from the very start. The local bishops voiced reservations while the phenomenon was hugely popular with believers. Commissions of inquiry at various levels came and went without a final ruling.
The Vatican handled the matter carefully. In 2010 it set up an international commission of study chaired by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, whose findings were passed to the Holy See. In 2019 Pope Francis officially authorised organised pilgrimages to Medjugorje, while making clear that this did not mean the apparitions were recognised as authentic.
The most important step came in September 2024. With the Pope's approval, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document titled 'The Queen of Peace' that grants a 'nihil obstat' ('nothing stands in the way') to the Medjugorje devotion. It recognises the many spiritual fruits of the place, such as conversions, vocations and people returning to the sacraments, and it encourages pilgrimages. However, following the Church's new criteria for this kind of phenomenon, it does not declare the apparitions to be of supernatural origin and leaves that question open. In short, it approves the devotion while staying cautious about the events themselves.
Today Medjugorje is one of the largest Marian pilgrimage centres in the world. It draws crowds comparable to Lourdes or Fátima and receives millions of visitors a year from every continent. The farming village of four decades ago is now a town devoted entirely to welcoming pilgrims, with hotels, guesthouses, restaurants and shops. A daily programme of prayer (the rosary, the international Mass, adoration) sets the rhythm of life at the shrine.
Several big dates through the year bring even larger crowds: the anniversary of the apparitions (24-25 June), the feast of Our Lady's birthday (5 August) and, above all, the Youth Festival (Mladifest) in late July or early August, which gathers tens of thousands of young people from around the world in an atmosphere of faith and celebration. Climbing Podbrdo and Križevac, often barefoot and in prayer, is still the most typical act of the pilgrimage.
Whatever each visitor believes, Medjugorje is striking for the depth of faith it gathers and for what it stands for: a forgotten Herzegovinian village that, in the middle of the communist era and on the brink of war, became a spiritual phenomenon known around the world. With the cautious backing the Church gave it in 2024, the shrine faces the future as one of the world's great religious destinations and the most visited place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
