Pope Set To Hold Press Conference on Apparitions and the Supernatural

The Vatican has announced that it will hold a press conference on Friday to discuss “supernatural phenomena,” including apparitions and how the church plans to handle such incidents in the future.According to a notice on the Vatican’s website, the event will begin at noon and feature three prominent Vatican members. The three include members of the Vatican’s Doctrine of the Faith and the director of the International Observatory for Marian apparitions and mystical phenomena of the Pontifical International Marian Academy.The conference is being held to “present the new provisions of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for discerning between apparitions and other supernatural phenomena.” The Vatican has not held a similar event since February 1978.The National Catholic Reporter notes that the decision to hold this press conference comes after a surge in reports of apparitions, a term for unexplained sightings, and supernatural phenomena by mainstream press.During the press conference, the Vatican is expected to introduce new guidelines on how it will evaluate supernatural phenomena. Until now, such reports have largely been dismissed by the Pope and the Vatican’s investigative team.Last year, Pope Francis briefly mentioned aliens while discussing early Christians’s interactions with “Jews and Gentiles.” For reasons not entirely clear, he compared these interactions to potential encounters with aliens.“If, for example, tomorrow an expedition of Martians came, and some of them came to us, here…Martians, right? Green, with that long nose and big ears, just like children paint them…And one says, ‘But I want to be baptized!’ What would happen?” the pope said at the time.Correction: The Vatican announced it would be holding a press conference regarding “supernatural phenomena,” including apparitions. An earlier version of this story misstated the scope of the topics planned for discussion at the press conference.

Pope Set To Hold Press Conference on Apparitions and the Supernatural

Pope Set To Hold Press Conference on Apparitions and the Supernatural

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