“Official reservation about the ‘Dozulé project” and the wish to throw light on the question: that’s the basic message that emerges from the communiqué on the ‘Dozulé’ phenomenon issued by the Swiss Episcopal Conference through its president Bishop Amédée Grab. Over the last thirty years or so groups of faithful have gathered at Dozulé, in France, to pray to the cross of Christ and invoke the salvation of the world, following the exhortations of the visionary Madeleine Aumont Maria, whose visions are not recognized by the Catholic Church. Already on 24 June 1985 Bishop Jean Badré of Bayeux and Lisieux, the diocese in which Dozulé is situated, had explained that, according to the Code of Canon Law, the site could not be described as a sanctuary and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a letter of 25 October 1985, had approved the bishop’s position. The Swiss Episcopal Conference has now distanced itself “from the ‘Dozulé’ project in accordance with the teaching of the universal Church”. Probably, says the communiqué, “some faithful will be astonished by this clarification and have difficulty in accepting it”. Hence “the invitation” to them “to redirect their witness of faith to the authentic mystery of the Saviour’s cross”, since, as Msgr. Grab writes, “the sources of our conviction and that of the world must be sought in the sacraments”.
