date: 02.11.2012.
The Information Office in Medjugorje has registered many pilgrims coming from the following countries: Austria, Germany, the United States, Italy, France, Belgium, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Ireland, Netherlands, Slovenia and Korea. Among many priests who have arrived, we had opportunity to meet Croatian missionary, Fr. Ilija Barisic, seventy years old priest who has been working and living in Africa for the last forty years. Fr. Ilija said how he has special love for Medjugorje through late Fr. Jozo Vasilj who was his colleague in Zadar, and Head of Seminary in Congo as well. “Whenever I come to Medjugorje I can always feel the presence of Fr. Jozo and I can never come home for a holiday and not visit Medjugorje. This is my spiritual oasis where I come to pray with the heart, have confession and to celebrate Holy Mass, this is where I also meet my brothers who live and work here”, said Fr. Ilija in his interview about Medjugorje. Fr. Ilija arrived to Congo in 1972, where he had built monastery and many schools at very distant areas that were hard to reach, but not impossible. He is now in parish of Kimbulu, in Franciscan Province of St. Benedict in Africa.
