PEOPLE : A Vision With a Message : When apparitions of the mother of Jesus are reported, the Studio City magazine Mary’s People covers the story.

From a remote village in Bosnia-Herzegovina to a back yard in North Hollywood, visions of the Virgin Mary are, literally and numerically, on the rise. Around the world, men and women have reported seeing a female figure of light, usually hovering a few feet above the ground. Often she is silent, but when she speaks, her message is invariably one of reconciliation and peace.

Keeping track of this phenomenon is Gabriel Meyer, editor of Mary’s People. This Studio City monthly magazine, an offshoot of the independent National Catholic Register, has been covering the rise of Marian apparitions since it began publication in 1990.

“There does seem to be a rise in Marian events around the world,” Meyer said. “The classic scenario has Mary appearing to Portuguese peasants or Croatian peasants. But now, we’re talking about non-Christian Africans in Rwanda seeing Mary. We’re talking about Moslems and Copts seeing a woman of light repeatedly appearing over a Coptic church in downtown Cairo. This is happening in all sorts of unlikely places, rather than in places where you can write it off as a cultural phenomenon.”

Meyer noted that the Catholic church has more than 100 such “Marian events” under official investigation today. To him, this suggests “there really is something here.”

“At the very least, we can say there’s a kind of hunger in people, and not just for the miraculous, or for thrills and chills,” he said. “I think there’s a hunger here for some sort of heavenly presence, some sort of assurance that things are OK, that we’re not bereft in this confusing and difficult world we live in.”

As that remark indicates, the 45-year-old Meyer, a native and resident of the South Bay area, treats the subject with a journalist’s professional distance. His publication, however, is less skeptical; it includes actual statements attributed to Mary, as well as articles by believers and a lengthy listing of Marian information centers.

“Mary’s People assumes something real is happening here,” he said. “It is an attempt to mix news and inspiration and spiritual guidance,” as well as to steer believers in these apparitions toward “official church teaching.”

“Some supporters get into apparitionitis,” he said. “They feel that if Mary is speaking to us, it must mean it’s the end of the world. We try to channel this constituency into the solid aspects of Marian doctrine and liturgy.”

Officially, the church takes a surprisingly laissez-faire attitude toward the subject. According to Father Gregory Coiro, special assistant in the office of public affairs of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, “any Catholic is free to accept or reject” Marian apparitions unless they have been specifically rejected by the Vatican. The rejections usually occur when the purported statements of Mary go against official doctrine.

The Vatican has yet to render a verdict on the most famous set of apparitions of the past 15 years, which are covered extensively by Meyer’s magazine. They are the appearances of Mary in Medjugorje, a small, very poor, overwhelmingly Catholic, ethnic Croatian village in Bosnia-Herzegovina. These apparitions began in June of 1981, when the village was part of Communist-ruled Yugoslavia.

“Six children, on a series of days, reported seeing a figure of light on a hillside,” said Meyer, who lived in the area for a time. “Within days, this became an enormous phenomenon. Thousands of people were traipsing over the hills of this village.” Within three years, they were joined by pilgrims from outside Yugoslavia, who continued paying visits to the region until last year’s outbreak of civil war.

The first purported messages of Mary at Medjugorje can be interpreted as a warning about that war, according to Meyer. “The first thing she urged on these children,” he said, “was reconciliation with Moslems and Orthodox Serbs. There was a very strong political content to the message.” The prophetic nature of her warning does not impress Richard Docter, chairman of the psychology department at Cal State Northridge. Docter does not doubt that these villagers, who were in their mid-teens in 1981, perceived something, but he feels their perceptions are rooted in their pre-pubescent psyches.

“Many adolescents struggle to come to terms with their emerging roles as adults,” he noted. “Young people searching for a way of understanding their feelings might need more intense religious affiliation as a kind of prop. Many converts to cults are adolescents. They’re looking for a substitute family.”

Thus, according to Docter, the adolescent subconscious in need of a mother figure could will her into mental “existence.”

And those of other ages who reported similar sightings upon arrival in Medjugorje? “It becomes increasingly probable that people who enter into travel thinking God will speak to them create a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.

While Meyer does not take a stand on their authenticity, he noted that “I never found evidence that it was a fraud or a hoax. The visionaries clearly think they’re seeing something, and they seem to be perfectly normal types of people.”

The same can be said, he added, for members of the “Marian movement,” who are the primary subscribers to his magazine. “They’re all over the map,” he said.

“Mary has always been more of a conservative Catholic preserve, but that may not be true any more,” he added. “The whole peace dimension of Medjugorje has attracted a number of left-wing Catholics, who feel Mary represents the feminine, peace-loving, reconciling aspect of God.”

After all, he noted, “You have this figure, coming at the end of the bloodiest century in human history, making an appeal for inter-ethnic reconciliation. It may be alerting us to pay attention to this issue.”

Where and When What: Mary’s People, a magazine that covers Marian apparitions. Cost: 10 issues for $17.50, or $2 per issue. Call: For information, (800) 421-3230.