Alleged apparitions of Jesus in Dozulé, France, not supernatural, Vatican says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Jesus did not appear to a woman in Dozulé, France, in the 1970s, and the messages she claimed to receive, including about Jesus' second coming, are misleading and twist central Christian teachings, said the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"The phenomenon of the alleged apparitions said to have taken place in Dozulé is to be regarded, definitively, as not supernatural in origin," Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect, wrote in a letter confirming the judgment of Bishop Jacques Habert of Bayeux-Lisieux, the local bishop.

The letter, presented to Pope Leo XIV Nov. 3, was published on the Vatican website Nov. 12.
The apparitions were reported by Madeleine Aumont, a Catholic mother of five, who claimed to have seen Jesus and received messages from him four dozen times between 1972 and 1978.

A key part of the message was that he allegedly wanted a 24-foot-tall cross to be erected outside town and supposedly said that it would have the same power as the cross on which he was crucified in Jerusalem.

But, Cardinal Fernández wrote, "that wood, raised upon Calvary, has become the real sign of Christ's sacrifice, which is unique and unrepeatable."

"For this reason, every other 'sign' of the cross -- whether devout or monumental -- cannot be considered on the same plane," he said. "Thus, it seems misleading, both theologically and pastorally-symbolically, to compare 'the Glorious Cross' of Dozulé to the Cross of Jerusalem."

Some of the alleged messages, the cardinal said, say that the construction of "the Glorious Cross" is "necessary for the salvation of the world" or is "a privileged means of obtaining universal forgiveness and peace."

However, "the Catholic faith teaches that the power of the cross does not need to be replicated, for it is already present in every Eucharist, in every church, in every believer who lives united to the sacrifice of Christ," Cardinal Fernández wrote. It is about faith not visible signs.

Jesus' cross does not need to be constructed of massive amounts of steel or concrete to be recognized, he said. "It is raised every time a heart, moved by grace, opens itself to forgiveness; every time a soul converts; every time hope is rekindled where the situation seemed impossible; and even when, by kissing a small cross, believers entrust themselves to Christ."

Even more troubling, he said, were alleged messages that referred "to the remission of sins' through the contemplation of this particular cross" that Jesus supposedly wanted built at Dozulé.

Claims that simply going to the foot of the Dozulé cross would bring the forgiveness of sins and salvation is a "theological error," the cardinal said.

The Catholic Church, Cardinal Fernández wrote, "teaches that forgiveness does not proceed from a physical location, but from Christ himself; the remission of sins is received through the sacraments -- in particular, the Sacrament of Penance -- and no material object can replace sacramental grace."

"The Cross is indeed a sign of salvation, but a cross that we construct is not, of itself, a place of automatic forgiveness, since forgiveness comes from Christ," he added.

Then, he said, there is the problem of predictions of Christ's second coming and the end of the world.

In fact, one of the alleged messages urged people to build the Dozulé cross before the end of the Holy Year 1975 because the world would not make it to the next Holy Year in 2000.

"Clearly, this purported prophecy was not fulfilled," the cardinal wrote.

"Although the theme of the Lord's return is an integral part of the Christian faith," he said, "the Church -- while recalling that Christ's return is a truth of the faith, even though no one can know or predict the precise date or its signs -- remains alert against millenarian or chronological interpretations, which risk setting the time or determining the modalities for the Final Judgment."

"The eschatological vigilance that Jesus recommends to his disciples -- to 'watch and pray' (Mt. 26:41) -- is a stable spiritual attitude, and not a temporal prediction or a geographically localized event," the cardinal wrote. "The danger of reducing Christian hope to an expectation of an imminent return with extraordinary events must be firmly avoided."