"We should note that they are immersed in the normal regular, everyday life of the family. They need to work and support their families. They have a similar life to many of us," he said.
He repeated that his role was not to speak about the apparitions and said the Church has not made the relevant statements yet. Nonetheless, questions at the press conference raised the issue.
Archbishop Hoser compared and contrasted the apparitions with the Marian apparitions at Kibeho in Rwanda, which began in October 1981. An apparition of the Virgin Mary had warned about a coming genocide, years before the mass killings of 1994.
The archbishop had served on a medical commission evaluating that apparition.
"The message was similar to the message that was said here in Medjugorje," the archbishop said. "it was a calling to conversion ...it is a calling to peace, an invitation to peace"
Unlike Medjugorje, the Rwanda apparitions have already received Church approval for having nothing that contradicts the faith.
"In the beginning there were doubts whether those visionaries were authentic," he said of the Rwanda apparitions. "That is why I ask you for your patience. The more complex a phenomenon is, it takes more time to achieve valid conclusions."
He noted some differences between the Medjugorje apparitions and other Marian apparitions. Some have counted 47,000 claims of individual apparitions related to Medjugorje, while other Marian apparitions are much fewer in number.
In other Marian apparitions, the Virgin Mary appears only in one place. At Lourdes, she always appeared in the cave that later became the famous grotto. In Fatima, she always appeared above the oak tree.
"Here, according to what visionaries are saying, the apparitions follow the person, where the person goes," Archbishop Hoser said. "This could be at home, when they are traveling, in the church."
"These are all specifics that make the work of a final decision more difficult," he explained.
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Archbishop Hoser, who holds the title of archbishop as a personal recognition from Pope John Paul II, heads the Polish Diocese of Warszawa-Praga.
When the archbishop's appointment as papal envoy was announced in February, Holy See press officer Greg Burke stressed that his mission was pastoral, not doctrinal, and would not consider the substance of the Marian apparitions there. That topic is under the competence of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Archbishop Hoser praised various expressions of faith he found in Medjugorje: the centrality of the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist, devotion to the Word of God, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to the rosary, and meditation on the mysteries of the faith and the Way of the Cross. He also praised the frequent use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
"From the religious perspective Medjugorje is very fertile grounds for religious vocations," he said. About 610 priests have cited Medjugorje as a motivating force in their vocation, with the greatest number of these vocations coming from Italy, the U.S. and Germany.
For the archbishop, this is a significant contribution given the crisis of vocations in some countries.
Medjugorje is only about 36 years old, he observed, but it attracts an estimated 2.5 million pilgrims each year. By comparison, Lourdes, France attracts 6 million people per year, 150 years after the apparition.