World-famous Medjugoje visionary Marija Lunetti, who says she has been seeing daily apparitions of the Virgin Mary since she was 16 in 1981, is planning a return to the site of her outdoor visions in Alabama next month.

Lunetti, who lives in Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzogovina, was one of six children who said the Virgin Mary began appearing to them daily in 1981. Their claims of simultaneous visions from the mother of Jesus has drawn millions of religious pilgrims to the small village that was in the former Yugoslavia before the Bosnian War from 1992-95.

Lunetti plans a return visit to Caritas in Shelby County, said Caritas founder Terry Colafrancesco, who hosted Lunetti, then known as Marija Pavlovic, on her first visit to Alabama in 1988, when she donated a kidney at UAB Hospital for her brother, Andrija.

Lunetti will be staying at Caritas from July 1-5, Colafrancesco said.

Lunetti stayed at the Colafrancesco home in 1988 and on many return visits, continuing her daily visions there and in a nearby field. The property has since been turned into a shrine promoting the Medjugorje visions.

The Roman Catholic Church has neither affirmed nor condemned the visions, but has allowed pilgrims to continue to visit Medjugorje. In 2019, Pope Francis, who previously expressed skepticism about the visions, approved Catholic bishops visiting and leading groups there.

The Medjugorje visions have been compared to the visions at Lourdes, Frances in 1858 and Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, which have been approved by the Roman Catholic Church. Lunetti told AL.com on a previous visit she believes Medjugorje will one day be approved by the church, but not until she and the other visionaries have died because the messages are being monitored for possible heresy or statements against church teaching.

Colafrancesco said the Virgin Mary has told the Medjugorje visionaries their visions will be the last such apparitions. “These are the last apparitions on earth,” Colafrancesco said. “This is the grand finale.”

Although Medjugorje was shut down for pilgrims in 2020 during the pandemic, pilgrimage tours have resumed there, Colafrancesco said. Caritas, one of the leading tour organizers to Medjugorje, took three tour groups on pilgrimages there in 2022.

Caritas of Birmingham has led 295 pilgrimage trips to Medjugorje since it started taking tours there in 1986, taking a total of 15,000 pilgrims on the trips.

Colafrancesco plans to go to Medjugorje on June 20 and return by the end of the month, bringing Lunetti, her husband, Paolo, and their youngest son, Giovanni, back to Alabama.

Lunetti will stay at Caritas, which will welcome pilgrims from around the country for the visit. Notifications have been sent out to the Caritas mailing list of more than 150,000. Caritas is also advertising the event on its web site, Mej.com.

At least two tour buses from Canada will be bringing pilgrims, said Joan McDonald, a member of the Caritas staff.

Lunetti has not been to Alabama since before the pandemic, in the fall of 2019, when she attended the wedding of Colafrancesco’s daughter, Bridget. Her last public apparitions in the field at Caritas were in 2013. It’s not certain whether she will have one of her daily visions in the Shelby County field where she has previously done so, but crowds will be allowed to gather there for prayer, including for a “patriotic rosary” on July 4. Lunetti says the Virgin Mary tells her during each daily vision at what time and where she will appear the next day. When Lunetti has a vision, she looks into the air and appears to be listening and speaking with someone hovering above her that cannot be seen by others. She receives “messages” that are usually asking people to pray.

In 2015, Pope Francis warned Catholics not to be reliant for their faith on visionaries reporting visits from the Virgin Mary.

Being Christian is not looking for those who always have something new to reveal, saying, “‘Where are the seers who will tell us today about the letter that Our Lady will send at four o’clock in the afternoon?’ for example,” Pope Francis said today in his morning Mass on June 6, 2015.

The pope said Christians should not rely on visionaries that “tell you this or that: no, the last word of God is Jesus Christ, there is no other!”

At the time, some predicted Pope Francis would issue a report condemning the visions at Medjugorje. So far, that has not been the case.

Dozens of believers in the Medjugorje visions live at the Caritas farm in Alabama, raising cattle, chicken and other animals, and praying daily. It’s on Shelby County Highway 43 near Sterrett.

In 2022, Colafrancesco opened an outdoor dining area on U.S. 280 in Birmingham called Villagio Colafrancesco. It includes a coffee shop, charcuterie shop and a gelato shop licensed by Old Bridge Gelateria, which is just outside the Vatican in Rome and a favorite stop for visitors to Rome. Workers from Old Bridge in Rome came to Birmingham to train the Caritas workers how to make the gelato using the same ingredients, recipe and equipment as in Rome. The gelato shop garnered social media buzz due to its ground rules that include a dress code and no use of cell phones or laptop computers, which Colafrancesco said was to encourage people to talk instead of looking at their phones.

See also: Gelato shop bans cell phones, profanity, scantily clad patrons, promotes Virgin Mary