Vatican okay’s famed Marian appearance amid backlog of alleged apparitions

ROME – Since unveiling a new set of norms for evaluating the validity of alleged Marian apparitions and other spiritual phenomena two months ago, the Vatican has put out rulings on several cases, recently approving devotion to two popular Marian appearances in Italy.

In mid-May, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published a new expedited procedure for vetting spiritual phenomena in which things such as alleged Marian apparitions will no longer be judged “supernatural,”...