date: 05.07.2025.
The 28th International Spiritual Retreat for Priests in Medjugorje was concluded with a Eucharistic celebration on Friday, July 4 at 11 a.m. presided over by Archbishop Aldo Cavalli, the Apostolic Visitor with a special role for the parish of Medjugorje. The retreat began on Monday, June 30, and the theme was: “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”. About 250 priests from 38 countries around the world participated in this spiritual renewal, from: the USA, India, Vietnam, England, Malawi, Sri Lanka, Denmark, Lithuania, Romania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, China, Belgium, Congo, Burkina Faso, Thailand, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Chad, Slovenia, Serbia, Poland, Canada, Slovakia, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, the Netherlands, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The coordinator of the spiritual retreat was the parish priest of Medjugorje, Fr. Zvonimir Pavičić.
''These spiritual retreats are very important. Everyone needs to stop. Not only priests, everyone needs spiritual retreat, a seminar, fasting, prayer, reflection... It is good to stop, to hear reflections on the priesthood, where I grow as a priest absorbing and learning from the experience of an older priest, and then from meetings and conversations with other priests. This is truly a great treasure, not only this one, but every spiritual renewal'', said Fr. Zvonimir Pavičić and emphasized that everyone needs a priest and that we need to pray for priests.
The lecturer at this spiritual renewal was Fr. Mladen Parlov, a priest of the Archdiocese of Split-Makarska, a professor in permanent vocation at the Catholic Faculty of Theology of the University of Split, who said that ''rarely anywhere can one experience the mystery of the Catholic Church as in Medjugorje''.
"A multitude of people, so many different people, here are priests from 38 countries, and all of them as one. Each one is my brother. I don't know him, but he is my brother. I'm not saying that symbolically, but I really experience it that way, and each one of them experiences it. Let's greet each other, you see a smile on their face, you see love... That means I am a Catholic, a member of the Catholic Church, and that is very clearly experienced in Medjugorje. If it is experienced anywhere in the world, it is very clearly experienced here.
Medjugorje is, I would say, a gift from God to the Catholic Church and the Croatian people of the late 20th and 21st centuries. I think that, as time goes by, the message of Medjugorje will be increasingly important, and that is peace, that is reconciliation, that is the brotherhood of peoples," said Fr. Mladen Parlov, calling for prayers for new, but also for existing, spiritual vocations.
During the five days of this spiritual retreat, the priests took part in lectures, adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, participated in the evening prayer program, prayed at the grave of Fr. Slavko Barbarić, Apparition Hill, and Cross Mountain, where they confessed to each other... (PHOTO)
