In the latest clarification of its kind to be issued in the past few months, the Vatican has weighed in on rumors that a missionary from the 19th century was actually the Virgin Mary. Unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church has confirmed that she was not.
Elenita de Jesús, a Catholic catechist from Puerto Rico, has been mistakenly identified as Jesus Christ and his mother, which the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) prefect has said “is not” accurate. The clarification was made in an August 1 letter written by Cardinal Víctor Fernández and addressed to the Caguas, Puerto Rico bishop. The rejection of the claims cited the Vatican’s recently updated regulations regarding alleged apparitions of holy figures.
Fernández explained that Elenita’s life was guided by the Holy Spirit and serves as an example of both “charity” and “proclamation of the Gospel,” adding that she had “profound love” for the Virgin Mary. But even though she served the Church at a time when it was “seriously threatened” and was referred to as “mother” by those with whom she walked, Elenita was not, in fact, the mother of God.
The cardinal continued to acknowledge that her life showed “great union” with Christ and “affection of Mary.” However, he said that “various testimonies” which liken her to the appearance of Our Lady—some of which he noted were “excess[ive] of admiration”—led to “the mistake of affirming” that she was indeed the Virgin Mary.
Fernández cautioned Catholics to avoid conflating “appreciation for Elenita” by claiming that she was the mother of God. He further justified the Vatican’s clarification with the “clearly not supernatural” rule that was established in May of this year, in reference to alleged holy apparitions.
Three months ago, the DDF issued updated regulations designed to help the discernment process of supernatural events and whether they constitute as apparitions. Being the first update to the pre-existing guidelines since 1978, one of the priorities with the rules were to help make the process of identifying and confirming or denying apparitions more efficient.
Under the new rules—which extend three categorization options to seven to account for nuance that varies in different cases—the declaration that an incident is “established as supernatural” is a designation only permitted to be made by the pope.
Since the rules were updated, the DDF has published several clarifications and opinions related to alleged apparitions. In June, the Vatican stated that suspected, repeated apparitions in Italy were not supernatural in nature, despite the phenomena that says a statue of Our Lady of Peace multiplies food and weeps blood.
A similar judgment was issued weeks later, when a 1974 Vatican consultation about the “Lady of All Nations” apparitions that were recorded in 1945 and 1959. This release reaffirmed this specific case as closed, noting that the DDF at the time had already determined them not to be supernatural, which was later upheld by Pope Paul VI.
