The Vatican’s doctrinal office gave the green light Wednesday to devotion associated with alleged apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Slovakia.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published July 9 a letter from its prefect, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, approving a declaration of nihil obstat (“nothing stands in the way”) for the Marian devotion connected with Mount Zvir, located in northern Slovakia, close to the Polish border.
The letter marked the doctrine office’s first ruling on an alleged apparition since Pope Leo XIV’s election.
What’s the story behind the devotion? And why has the ruling come now?
On Aug. 5, 1990, as the Communist Bloc crumbled across Central and Eastern Europe, three children went to pick blueberries on Mount Zvir, near Litmanová, a Slovak village with a Byzantine Catholic tradition.
The children — Iveta (Ivetka) Korčáková, 11, Katarína (Katka) Češelková, 12, and Katka’s nine-year-old brother, Miťko — were startled by a cracking noise. Scared, they took refuge in a log cabin, which stood in a meadow surrounded by forest.
Inside the cabin, they heard banging sounds that appeared to be getting closer and closer. They prayed for Mary’s protection, promising each other that they would, in the future, be more devoted to their Catholic faith. Amid their prayers, Ivetka and Katka reputedly saw a figure bathed in light who they recognized as the Virgin Mary.
As night was falling, the children left for the village, with the apparition following protectively behind them. When they reached a wayside cross, the figure knelt and crossed herself. The children described her as wearing a white dress, a blue cloak and veil, and a crown. She also had a rosary.
The children told their parents everything they had seen, but they did not believe the story. They also told their priest, who urged them not to spread news of the incident.
Ivetka and Katka returned to the site of the apparition, where the Virgin Mary reputedly appeared to them again and began to impart messages. She called for people to come from all over the country to pray the rosary on Mount Zvir (Hora Zvir in Slovak).
Pilgrims flocked to the site, where there were also reports of a supernatural solar event similar to the 1917 Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. The pilgrims began taking water from a nearby spring, believing it had healing properties.
For five years, Ivetka and Katka recorded short alleged Marian messages at regular intervals, until Aug. 6, 1995, when the figure reportedly announced there would be no further apparitions, though she would remain present at Mount Zvir.
When the apparitions began, the girls had been living in Czechoslovakia. Following the peaceful break-up of the country in 1992, they were now residing in Slovakia, the Czech Republic’s poorer, more Catholic neighbour. Many of Litmanová’s younger residents left to work abroad in the uncertain post-communist climate.
Following the apparitions, Ivetka joined a religious community in Stará Halič, central Slovakia, taking the name Maria Goretti. She left nine years later, returning to Litmanová, where she lived with her parents and battled despondency as she searched for a job. She found work caring for the elderly and disabled, later married, and then moved to the U.K.
Katka reportedly married, had two daughters, and emigrated to the U.S.
Mount Zvir fell under the jurisdiction of the Archeparchy of Prešov, part of the Slovak Greek Catholic Church, one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the pope. Local Bishop Ján Hirka established a commission to investigate the alleged apparitions. His successor, Archbishop Ján Babjak, continued the investigation, reportedly submitting the commission’s conclusions, contained in a 2011 report, to the Vatican’s doctrinal office.
In 2004, Babjak issued a decree formally establishing Mount Zvir as a place of prayer
and dedicating a chapel established there to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 2008, he named Mount Zvir a pilgrimage site.
Hundreds of thousands of people visited the site annually, notably on Aug. 5, the anniversary of the first alleged apparition, but also on Sundays after the First Friday of the month, when the later apparitions occurred.
From 2009 onward, the liturgy was celebrated daily at the site, along with the hearing of confessions.
In May 2024, Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith unveiled a new streamlined process for evaluating alleged apparitions, replacing norms dating to 1978.
The DDF proposed a new system in which the discernment process following an alleged supernatural event no longer ended simply with a declaration of either constat de supernaturalitate (“confirmed to be of supernatural origin”) or non constat de supernaturalitate (“not confirmed to be of supernatural origin”).
Instead, a “doctrinal-pastoral evaluation” might conclude with a “nihil obstat” — a declaration that “nothing hinders” a bishop from seeking to “draw pastoral benefit from the spiritual phenomenon.”
The declaration of “nihil obstat” could be reached “after assessing the various spiritual and pastoral fruits of the event and finding no substantial negative elements in it.”
The new norms enabled the DDF to tackle a sizable backlog of reputed apparitions. A stream of rulings followed on everything from Our Lady of All Nations to Medjugorje.
In February 2025, Archbishop Jonáš Maxim, the current Archbishop of Prešov, wrote to the DDF, expressing gratitude for the “many spiritual fruits obtained by the pilgrims who continue to visit [Mount Zvir], even though the ‘apparitions’ ended 30 years ago.”
In a follow-up letter in May this year, Maxim proposed a declaration of nihil obstat, “to accompany the phenomenon in question in a pastoral manner.”
In a letter to Maxim released July 9, Cardinal Fernández highlighted positive aspects of the reputed Marian messages. He also noted “some ambiguities and unclear aspects.”
In particular, he cited a 1990 message saying “the cause of all sickness is sin” and a 1991 locution, recorded in the aftermath of the Gulf War, suggesting that “nearly all people in one part of the world [the Persian Gulf] are condemned.”
Fernández wrote that “such messages cannot be considered acceptable and, therefore, are not appropriate for publication.” But he argued that these “confused expressions of an internal experience” could be properly interpreted in light of other messages, which stressed that “finding Christ’s love brings us happiness” and “closing ourselves off from his love destroys our lives, renders them a failure, and becomes a source of suffering.”
The cardinal said that, provided these words of caution were kept in mind, Archbishop Maxim could proceed with a declaration of nihil obstat.
“Although this declaration does not imply recognition of the supernatural authenticity of the alleged apparitions, it nevertheless permits the approval of public devotion and informs the faithful that they can safely approach this spiritual offering, if they so wish, and that the basic contents of the alleged messages can help us live the Gospel of Christ,” Fernández explained.
In addition to making the nihil obstat declaration, Maxim will publish a compilation of messages recorded on Mount Zvir, excluding those highlighted by the Vatican’s doctrinal office.