Short report about Medjugorje:
The first parish church of St. Jacobs in Medjugorje was built in 1897. It was quite large and beautiful enough for it's purpose,but it was built on quake-prone ground and it soon began to crack and sink.After the First World War a new church was planned and preparations began being made for it. The church was blesed on January19,1969,but it's interior finished later.All the pilgrims who took the message of Medjugorje seriously felt the need to go to this Medjugorje church and begin to realise that message there: through prayer,sacramental conversion and penance. From the very beginnings of the Medjugorje apparitions there were enough priests to serve the spiritual needs of thr pilgrims in their own languages. The Medjugorje church of St. Jacob the Apostle became the best known and most visited centre of prayer in the world in 1981.
This is the apparition hill. On June 24,1981, the Blessed Virgin Mary,mother of Jesus,appeared in the vilage of BIjakovici in the Medjugorje parish,to six young parishioners(two boys and four girls). The millions of Medjugorje pilgrims,all who are physicaly capable of it,visit that place. Nomerous pilgrims,many of whom were born and raised on flat asphalt,often dresed in unsuitabe clothes some even barefoot or on their knees,climb the charp rocks to the place of the first apparitions ardently saying their rosaries es they go or singing songs to the Virgin.
About one kilometre as the crow files from the church of Medjugorje rises the hill of Krizevac.It's top is 520 metres above sea level and it commands a breathtaking view of the whole of Brotnjo,Ljubuski region and part of commune of grude.The hill was called ipovac until 1934,when it was renamed Krizevac(The Hill of the Cross or Cross mountain). In that year the priest and the inhabitants of Medjugorje erected on it's top an 8.56 metres-high reinforced concrete cross dedicated to "Jesus Christ the Redeemer of Mankind,as a mark of their faith love and hope,as is carved on the cross itself,"to mark the 1900th anniversary of the Passion of jesus".The cross was finished on March 15,1934,and on the following day,the Friday of Passion Week,it was blessed and at its foot mass was served for the first time,attended by a great crowd of people.Later it became customary to serve mass at its foot on the first Sunday after the Nativity of the Virgin Mary,i.e. on the first Sunday after September 8,in memory of the Elevation of the Holly cross.
