As promised, here is my answer to the points that you brought up.

-          We are both “ignorant”: this is why we communicate, even in bad English…

-          There seems to be nothing more in your article in La Stampa and in your Blog post that what is found in the book description’s blurb released on the publisher’s website.

-          As far as I have been able to understand from the automatic translation, your interview with Mr. Ivkovic “published in a different article” in the paper edition of La Stampa is neither referenced in the electronic edition nor in your Blog post. Is the international reader not justified to perceive both of your accessible electronic articles — the first one released by La Stampa, the second one on your complete control — as a coherent whole that reveals your position?

-          Have you not used Antonio Socci to back up the attack against Mgr Zanic and his successor, Mgr Peric — thus avoiding a counterbalance that should have been submitted by an objective journalist to Mr. Ivkovic’s agenda supported by Cardinal Schönborn himself, a Medjugorje propagandist?

-          As a vaticanist, would it not have been appropriate to interview the actual Bishop of Mostar who is concerned by those allegations? Or his spokesperson? May I suggest that a well informed critic who is geographically nearer to you, Marco Corvaglia, could have helped you to explore some discerning points of view, quite different from those you are used to hear like the ones of Fr. Livio Fanzaga, the Director of Radio Maria where you host a monthly tribune?

-          I don’t put into question that the Yugoslav communist regime has tried “to control and influence the Medjugorje phenomenon”, and “influence Bishop Zanic” — we agree on that.

-          My main point is that you convey the allegation that the Secret Service so heavily influenced Mgr Zanic’s decision that he changed completely his position from January 1982 — does the choice of that date point to a specific historical document? — making him a tool of the communist regime, thus its marionette concerning Medjugorje. As if the Ordinary had no legitimate intimate intellectual, spiritual and pastoral motive for the change of his initial spontaneous and positive assessment of the supernatural quality of the Medjugorje events — completely independent of the regime’s political stratagems.

-          In the next article, I will try to set the record straight on Mgr Zanic’s position and show how your readers may have been ill-informed by abuse of inadequate journalistic tools, such as the hypnotic argument of the “Communism Hypothesis”.

-          That said, I agree with you, dear Mr. Andrea, that “these documents are important: the direct or indirect influence of the communist regime in Medjugorje is a historical issue, and it needs to be studied”, indeed in context with the ins and outs of Bishop Pavao Zanic’s real Posizione. With the same attention and concern that you showed in your acclaimed work in which you denounced “the arbitrary diminishment of the figure of Pope Pius XII.”

Cordially,

Louis Bélanger

Per il Sig. Tornielli
A causa di sollecitazioni di amici sono stato invogliato a fare qualche ricerca sul “Fenomeno Medjugorie”, per passione e non da “professionista”. Ad ogni modo dopo avere letto il suo articolo sono stato mosso dal desiderio di riportare un’altra versione dei fatti, per quello che ho potuto raccogliere come fonti, e non convinto su quanto è stato proposto con l’articolo del Sig. Tornielli, ho cercato di dare una (mia) risposta a quanto affermato. Spero che il Sig. Tornielli possa leggere la mia riflessione e se vuole correggere qualche mio “errore” sarò ben lieto di prenderne atto.

Alcune informazioni rinviano a dei link web per comodità di consultazioni, per esse si può leggere: Luca Rastello, La guerra in casa, Einaudi Editore, 1998.

Cordialità.