Father Slavko Barbarić, O.F.M.

Life

Slavko Barbarić was born on 11 March 1946 in the hamlet of Dragićina, near Čitluk in what was then the Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, into a Croatian Catholic peasant family. He entered the Franciscan Province of Herzegovina, made his solemn profession, and was ordained a priest on 19 December 1971. A gifted student, he pursued theological, philosophical and psychological studies across Europe, earning a doctorate in catechetics from the University of Freiburg in 1982.

In 1984 his superiors assigned him to Saint James parish in Medjugorje, where the reported Marian apparitions had been ongoing since 1981. He succeeded Father Tomislav Vlašić as the chief spiritual director of the alleged seers and as the public face of the parish for international pilgrims. For sixteen years he gave hundreds of conferences each year, led adoration, the rosary on Apparition Hill and the Way of the Cross on Mount Križevac, wrote some twenty books on prayer, fasting and conversion that have been translated into more than twenty languages, and tirelessly promoted the spiritual practices associated with Medjugorje. He also worked extensively with addicts at the Cenacolo Community.

His ministry was not without controversy: his confessional faculties were suspended on two occasions in 2000 by the local Bishop of Mostar-Duvno for disobedience to ordinary jurisdiction in the disputed matter of Medjugorje. He died of a sudden heart attack on 24 November 2000 while descending Mount Križevac after leading the Way of the Cross. The day after his death, the visionary Marija Pavlović-Lunetti reported that the Virgin had said of him, 'Your brother Slavko has been born into heaven and is interceding for you.'