Medjugorje Website Updates

Argyll, Scotland (CNN) -- Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow was enjoying a pint at his local pub in the Scottish Highlands when he got an idea that would change his life -- and the lives of thousands of others.

It was 1992, and MacFarlane-Barrow and his brother Fergus had just seen a news report about refugee camps in Bosnia. The images of people suffering in the war-torn country shocked the two salmon farmers, who'd visited there as teenagers and remembered the warmth of the Bosnian people.

"We began saying 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just do one small thing to help?' " MacFarlane-Barrow says.

Medjugorje Youthfest Orchestra and Choir performing at the International Youth Festival in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During the 70’s, in Germany. Monica was 17 when she lost her mother whom she loved very much. She was left behind with three siblings and her father who was a non-practicing protestant and an architect near Bonn. Monica detested her father. He had very little interaction with his children, so she found him cold, rigid, and insensitive. Since she was unable to connect with him on a heart level, she moved out at 17, using her studies as an excuse.

The warm surf of La Jolla, Calif., isn't a setting people associate with the Virgin Mary. But on many days, there is a surfer whose passion for the perfect wave is nothing compared to his head-over-heels love for the Holy Mother.

His name is Donald Calloway and he picked up surfing as a military brat bouncing around the United States and Japan.

He also picked up marijuana, heroin, LSD, shoplifting and money laundering for the Japanese mafia. By the age of 20, he had a rap sheet, a drug habit and serious thoughts of suicide.

"After having gone to two rehabs, been in jail, kicked out of a foreign country, I was at my crisis in life. ... I picked up a book that my parents had on their bookshelf about the Virgin Mary," Calloway said.

Tratto dal programma di RAIDUE "Sulla via di Damasco" condotto da Monsignor Giovanni D'Ercole.

Thirty years ago, on June 24, 1981, the Virgin Mary supposedly began appearing to six young people in a small village called Medjugorje in Bosnia Herzegovina. Thus began of one of the most controversial phenomenons in recent memory that turned this tiny village into one of the most visited places in Europe. More than one million visit Medjugorje every year.

Medjugorje - Reportage del pellegrinaggio a Medjugorje dell'Associaizone Amici di Telechiara, nel trentennale dalle apparizioni della 'Gospa' come chiamano in croato la Madonna. (Elena Mattiuzzo)