Father Elija Vella was asked about Maria Divine Mercy during a Radio Maria program. Below is the transcript of what he had to say on the subject:
Question sent to Fr Elija: "For someone to say she is Maria Divine Mercy and that Jesus is appearing to her and He tells her the Pope is False. How can we find out if this person is genuine or not? Because a number of persons, some of them go to Mass every day, are believing these messages. What do you think?"
Fr. Elija: Thanks for asking because this way I will have the chance to reply to several doubts which were also raised on these, let us call them "private revelations".
Today there any many who say that Jesus appears to them, Our Lady appears (...). And many times we start to doubt the authenticity of these visions.
A vision can be deceptive, from the part of the person who without even knowing wants to have attention brought upon her. She wants everyone to talk about her. So this is deception coming from the person.
It can be psychological (a cause), i.e. the mind makes you see and your ear makes you hear that which in truth is not real, but you are convinced that it is real. Naturally, psychiatry calls these hallucinations or illusions. Thus, many are those who often are convinced of seeing or hearing, without any deception from the person. In reality, they are themselves being deceived, because what they see or hear is not real and is just psychological.
The third case involves the devil making use of one's fantasy and imagination, and sometimes also uses visions. In reality this is deception .Because in this way, he will be giving messages in the name of Jesus or Mary, but the messages will really be against what Jesus and Mary want. Thus the evil one will be doing his part.
Then we have those who have authentic visions, like at Lourdes and Fatima. These are authentic because after many studies even from the part of the Church, they are declared (by the Church) as being real and there is the Divine hand behind them.
The Church takes its time to examine before arriving at a conclusion. The Church is very prudent and will not rush to tell you something is authentic.
On the contrary it will declare it as false more quickly than to declare as authentic, because it does not want to allow even a doubt of deception.
Now how to tell if in the case of a private revelation, if the person is truly authentic or not? You can notice from various factors. The first factor is obedience. When you notice disobedience towards (church) authority, you start to doubt whether this is really authentic or not. Probably it is not authentic. Recently I had a case in Sicily where we had some private revelations and I was involved to determine the authenticity and the testing which is done on these persons is about obedience. If you do not obey the Church, then that means there is no authenticity. This Sicilian case was declared not authentic because those who were claiming to receive visions, as soon as the (church) authorities gave them some directives or orders, they did not obey them. That is a clear-cut case which is not authentic.
One also has to check whether the messages are agree spiritually and evangelically with the Bible. Here we have a case which is very very clear: Jesus tells her (Maria Divine Mercy) that the Pope is false. Jesus will NEVER tell something of the sort to any person. When we start to see that the visions spoke against the Bishop, against priests, against the Pope... Here immediately you can tell that DECEPTION is involved in this case, (Maria Divine Mercy) visions which are not authentic.
If you were to tell me Jesus told this person to pray a lot for the Pope because he needs prayers, then such a vision could be authentic. If the vision tells you pray for the conversion of Priests and for the Bishop to be filled with the Holy Spirit, then yes that could be an authentic vision.
But if the vision talks against the Pope, against Priests, against the Bishop, we can be 100% certain that they are not authentic. There is DECEPTION involved, perhaps from the part of the devil who uses these things, or
the visionary (Maria Divine Mercy) herself is being deceived.
She is being deceived in one way or another. We see that here we have to be careful. One cannot go beyond some rules or directives. This is one of the things that make us not just doubt, but we can be certain that these (Maria Divine Mercy's) are FALSE VISIONS.
So this person claiming to be Maria DIVINE (Mercy), even here the very name is DECEPTIVE as nobody is DIVINE except for God. Not even the Madonna is divine.
When we say DIVINE, only God is divine. How can a human person say I am Maria DIVINE? Not even Our Lady can say something like this. Divinity belongs to God only. As you can see, there are many clear signs that these visions are not authentic. We do not condemn those who believe (in these visions) as surely they do not do this out of evil intentions, they do it out of ignorance and somewhat excessive enthusiasm.
They are in error, and let us pray with God's help to discern private revelations so as not to be deceived.That was a very important question, thanks to whoever asked it as I could say a word on this topic.
Below is the recording of the radio program with English subtitles:
Fr. Elija Vella was born in St Paul's Bay. He is a member of Franciscan Conventual congregation. Fr. Elija graduated in theology in 1965 from the Lateran University, Rome and has thought theology for some years. He has written various books including "Satana" and "Diavoli e esorcismi". He was nominated by the Archbishop of Malta Mgr Joseph Mercieca as Official Exorcist of the Archdiocese of Malta. He is also president of the Archdiocesan Commission on Occult and Satanism. Father Elija leads prayers, seminars, retreats and spiritual exercises in several countries across five continents.
