From Net.hr:
“Our Lady has been calling us to peace, conversion and prayer for decades. That is why even today we must not allow hatred to give birth to new hatred,” is the message of peace from Ivan Dragičević, one of the six visionaries from Medjugorje after the unprecedented vandalism.
“Our weapon is not condemnation, but the rosary. Our strength is not revenge, but forgiveness. Our response is not fear, but faith,” he said in an interview with Net.hr, referring to the act that shocked the regional public and religious community. News of the desecration of the shrine of Our Lady in Medjugorje reached him. Photos of the statue of Our Lady on Apparition Hill and at the Blue Cross spread like wildfire. The face and hands were spray-painted with black ink and the inscriptions “Devil in a Skirt” and “Our Lady of the Devil” greeted the astonished believers who came to pray at one of the most famous Catholic pilgrimage shrines this morning.
One of the six visionaries
The perpetrator, who has since been caught near Ljubuški, also called out the visionaries there. One banner had their names written on it along with the message: “As if these fraudsters had given us evidence.”
Dragičević was one of six locals, then children and teenagers, to whom Our Lady appeared one June day in the summer of 1981.
After the act that horrified many, Dragičević reminds us that Medjugorje was not built on stone or buildings, but on the prayers of millions of pilgrims, and no one, he says, can destroy that. “What comes from God cannot be defeated by human malice,” he believes. And that is why he called on everyone not to respond to this with division, but to send a message of peace that is the symbol of Medjugorje.
“Therefore, I invite you: let us not respond with words that divide, but with a life that bears witness to the Gospel. Let us be even more faithful to the Holy Mass, adoration, fasting, praying the Rosary and reading the Holy Scriptures. May this event be an incentive to open our hearts even more to Christ.”
“May the same message that has been heard from the first day of Medjugorje resound again: Peace, peace, peace – and only peace. May peace reign between God and people and among all people,” he concluded.