By Charles Igwe
The Vatican has granted its official “nihil obstat” — meaning “nothing stands in the way” — for public Marian devotion at Mount Zvir in Litmanová, Slovakia, a site where alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary were said to have taken place between 1990 and 1995.
This decision, announced by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, comes under new guidelines introduced last year for evaluating alleged supernatural events. Though the Church stops short of declaring the apparitions as “supernatural,” the nihil obstat allows for public worship and pilgrimages to the site to continue without concern for doctrinal error.
In a letter to Archbishop Jonáš Jozef Maxim of Prešov, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, head of the Dicastery, noted the “many spiritual fruits” that have resulted from devotion at the site. These include deep confessions, personal conversions, and the ongoing flow of pilgrims to the small Byzantine Catholic community high in Slovakia’s northern mountains.
Messages attributed to the Virgin Mary during the apparitions, while not always precisely worded, include powerful calls to conversion, inner freedom, simplicity, and finding true joy in God’s love. For example, one message states: “Let Jesus free you… do not let your Enemy take away your freedom.” Another reads: “I love you just as you are… but this world will not make you happy.”
The Vatican acknowledges that a small number of the messages contain ambiguities, which it attributes to the visionaries’ human effort to describe interior spiritual experiences. For this reason, Archbishop Maxim has been encouraged to publish a carefully selected compilation, omitting any passages that might cause confusion or harm to people’s faith.
Importantly, the nihil obstat does not equate to a declaration that the apparitions were supernatural. Instead, it affirms that devotion at the site is spiritually beneficial and in line with Church teachings — allowing the faithful to engage with it in good conscience.
The apparitions were said to have been experienced by three children — Ivetka Korcáková, Katka Ceselková, and Mitko Ceselka — beginning on August 5, 1990, in a modest wooden hut three kilometers from Litmanová. The Blessed Virgin reportedly appeared to them under the title “Immaculate Purity.”
