Međugorje, Lourdes, Fatima: Religious tourism earns one town €270m but what are devotees seeking?

22.09.2024 - 22:48 / euronews.com / Rebecca Ann Hughes

This week, the Vatican officially approved religious pilgrimages to a southern Bosnian village where children reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary. 

While it didn't declare that the apparitions in Međugorje were authentic or of supernatural origin, it approved public acts of devotion at the site justified by the powerful spiritual experience of visiting. 

The papal green light is essential for validating pilgrimage destinations - and it is also a key economic driver. 

Religious tourism is a lucrative business. Millions of people travel each year for pilgrimages or spiritual reasons and an industry of accommodation, guides and transport has grown up around this. 

Devotees visit for everything from relief from terminal diseases to blessings for future endeavours. 

In 1981, six children and teenagers reported seeing visions of the Madonna on a hill in Međugorje, located in the wine-making region of Herzegovina.

Some of those original ‘seers’ have claimed the visions have occurred regularly since then, even daily, and that Mary sends them messages.

As a result, Međugorje has become a major European pilgrimage destination for Christian believers, attracting millions of people over the years. 

Last year alone, 1.7 million Eucharistic wafers were distributed during Masses there, according to statistics published on the shrine's website, a rough estimate of the number of Catholics who visited.

With approval from the Holy See, Međugorje now joins more established Catholic sanctuaries in Fatima and Lourdes - although here the Marian apparitions have been declared authentic by the Vatican.

Fatima, a town in central Portugal, is home to a sanctuary which marks the spot where the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared before three children in 1917. 

Pilgrimages here now take place on the 13th of each month between May and October with the largest crowds - up to a million - visiting on 13 May and 13 October. 

Lourdes in southwest France is famed for the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes. 

Every year, millions of pilgrims and spiritual tourists visit the Grotto of Massabielle where a local 14-year-old girl is said to have experienced a Marian apparition in 1858. 

In the grotto, the faithful drink or bathe in water flowing from a spring, which is said to have curative properties. 

Over the years, local bishops and Vatican officials have cast doubt on the reliability and motivations of the ‘seers’ at Međugorje because of concerns that economic interests may have been driving their reports of continued visions.

Religious tourism has moulded the local economy, with an entire industry catering to pilgrims: hotels, private accommodations, family-run farm businesses, even sports complexes and camping sites.

It is the same story in Fatima and