Who would've thought I'd see a crowd of Indian Catholic pilgrims in a small Croatian town in Bosnia 😅

I stopped by Medjugorje completely by chance for the night and suddenly found myself in an important Catholic site in Europe.

In 1981, six teenagers claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared to them (each one separately). The Vatican still can't make up its mind about the official position: whether to confirm the miracle or not. They say the Virgin appeared in the town again after that. They assembled entire commissions, but the initial findings were that the story wasn't credible. Nevertheless, people didn't need much more than rumors, and believers started flooding the city.

By 2019, the Vatican gave up trying to stop all this and decided to take charge instead. The Pope blessed pilgrimage for ordinary people, though not yet for official Catholic figures.

The locals switched their economy to pilgrimage mode: hotels, guesthouses, souvenirs on every corner, restaurants—everything is focused on religious tourism. That's how they make a living.

And I was just passing through to see a nearby waterfall, so Medjugorje turned out to be a really convenient spot.