November 30, 2011 | Medjugorje Today TV

(By Jakob Marschner) - World-famous Medjugorje priest Fr. Jozo Zovko relocates from Austria to Croatia. From December or early next year he will live in the Franciscan monastery in Zagreb. Fr. Jozo has all the usual rights of a priest but has accepted not to talk about Medjugorje in public until the Vatican Commission has finished its work.

Before long Fr. Jozo Zovko will again be able to greet his Franciscan brothers in Croatian when he meets them in his home monastery.

After almost three years in Austria and on the island of Badija, Medjugorje’s parish priest at the time the apparitions began will soon relocate to Zagreb, the Croatian capital, well-informed sources tell Medjugorje Today. Fr. Jozo happily accepted the relocation that most likely will take place in December.

Though Fr. Jozo has full priestly faculties and may administer the Sacraments like every other priest, he has accepted his superiors’ wish that he does not give interviews or talks in public about the apparitions in Medjugorje or the Virgin Mary’s messages until the Vatican Commission on Medjugorje has arrived at a conclusion.

“Father Jozo doesn’t take it as a punishment. He says he understands. He didn’t say he was happy with it, but he understands. He knows that it is the right thing to do” one source tells Medjugorje Today.

Known for his unusual charisms, inspired preaching and prophetic speech, Fr. Jozo has been much sought out by Medjugorje pilgrims ever since the early 1980s. For the past three years, though, only very little has been heard of the world-famous priest.

Overburdened with work, Fr. Jozo sought and received from his Order a sabbatical year in February 2009. Fr. Jozo spent the next six months in charge of the rebuilding of the historical Franciscan convent on the island of Badija off the Croatian coast. Fr. Jozo also helped the workers, and enjoyed to cultivate vegetables and fruits in the rich convent garden.

With winters slowing down the renovation of a convent without normal living quarters, Fr. Jozo having just a small room with very little comfort on Badija, in the late Summer of 2009 he arrived at the Franciscan monastery close to Graz, Austria. Since then Fr. Jozo has been going back and forth between Graz and Badija, according to seasons.

Though this brought Fr. Jozo back to the European mainland, it did not bring the pilgrims back to him. The three years out of public sight have been quiet and revitalizing:

“He did not want to bother his brothers at the monastery who had greeted him so warmly, and so he did everything he could to stay out of sight. He celebrated Mass with his brothers but also used this special time to pray and he took classes of theology that he took when he was young but now after all these years it was even more interesting, he loved it. Classes like Church history, Christian mysticism and other subjects” a well-informed source tells Medjugorje Today.

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