MARY, OUR MOTHER

Medjugorje pilgrims help drug addicts

via therecord.com.au

Men make the sign of the cross during lunch at the Merciful Father Community in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina on 26 February. The pilgrim-funded programme helps men overcome addictions through prayer and work. Photo: CNS/Paul Haring

MEDJUGORJE, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Millions of pilgrims have come to Medjugorje and reported experiencing conversion in the village where six young people claimed they began seeing Mary in 1981.

In the 30 years since, many of the pilgrims have made donations that helped make huge changes in the lives of orphaned children, women in difficulty and young men with serious addiction problems, usually involving drugs. 
The men who live in the Merciful Father Community on the edge of Medjugorje have conversion stories of their own and they know it is thanks to the alleged visions and the generosity of the pilgrims that they have a chance for a better future. 
Brano Bakic, 32, has completed 33 months of the three-year recovery programme that focuses on prayer and work according to a very strict schedule that begins at 6am each day. 
“I believe that God saved me, that Mary saved me,” he said. 
The former heroin addict said that when a social worker first dropped him off at the community gates, “nothing was clear. There was only big confusion. But now I know God saved me and I’m ready for a good life.” 
The recovery community was founded 10 years ago by Franciscan Fr Slavko Barbaric, who founded Mother’s Village in 1993 to care for orphans from the Balkans War. The village now includes a large kindergarten, family-style homes for 55 children whose parents have died or no longer can care for them, a house for pregnant women in crisis and the Merciful Father Community. 
Franciscan Father Svetozar Kraljevic, current director of the village, said the Franciscans were able to build and to expand the village “knowing that the pilgrims had every desire and intention to help.” 
He said the people who come to Medjugorje because of the alleged apparitions are true pilgrims “if they are about the quality of life and reaching out - first for their own lives and then for others,” he said. “If what happens here is self-centered, then it’s not about God.” 
Zaklina Pazin, who shares the story of Mother’s Village with English-speaking pilgrims and shows them around, said, “The pilgrims are generous and they want to give back.” 
The men at Merciful Father spend much of their day doing manual labour; they work in the gardens at Mother’s Village and are responsible for the upkeep of the buildings. They make Rosaries and plaques and mosaics. They did the back-breaking work of digging through the rocky Apparition Hill to install lights for pilgrims. And occasionally, Bakic said, they carry aged and infirm pilgrims up the steeper Krizevac, or “Cross Hill,” where locals and pilgrims meditate on the Stations of the Cross. 
“We start every day in the chapel and end every day in the chapel on our knees,” Bakic said. The community’s chapel has no altar - the men go to Mass in town - but “every day one guy reads the word of God and tells what it means to him. I think it’s a very good way to think about these things.” The men are not confined and some leave after a few days or few weeks, Bakic said. “For the first three months, each person has a guardian angel guy who is with him all day. It is the biggest obligation in the community.” 
Sitting in a large dining room where the aroma of garlic and other spices made it clear it was almost lunchtime, Ilija Cale, another recovering addict at Merciful Father, said, “All this is connected with what happens in Medjugorje. 
“Everything that does not come from God, falls down. The point of Medjugorje is to pray. Like everyone, we came to Medjugorje with a bag of bad stuff on our backs. We had to put that down to get better and we put that down with prayer.” 
Bakic said the relationship with the pilgrims is a two-way street. “We have money from the pilgrims, but they have our testimony and our hope.”