The Vatican announced on Wednesday (12/11) that the alleged appearance of Jesus Christ in Dozere, a small town in Normandy in northern France, was not of supernatural origin. The decision was approved by Pope Leo XIV and published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, officially ending decades of controversy surrounding the case. The hill became famous and became a popular pilgrimage site.
Between 1972 and 1978, Madeleine Aumont, a Catholic, claimed to have met Jesus 49 times. According to her, Christ would have called for the construction of a 7.38-metre-high luminous cross on top of a hill to convey a message with spiritual guidance and as a sign of salvation and second coming.
The Catholic Church maintains a formal process for evaluating supernatural phenomena and apparitions attributed to holy figures. After years of analysis, the Vatican concluded that the phenomena reported in Dozle “have no true divine origin.”
“The phantom phenomena that are said to have occurred in Dozre must be conclusively considered not to be supernatural, considering all the consequences of this decision,” the text states.
The Hill of Jesus in Dozere, where Madeleine Aumont claimed to have had a vision, is located on a hill on the outskirts of the city and has been a site of voluntary pilgrimage for many years. At that place, believers began to gather, pray and erect small crosses, believing that Jesus had appeared there.
Even without official recognition from the Church, the hill gained notoriety among Catholics in France and abroad, and was referred to by believers as the “Hill of the Glorious Cross,” or simply the “Hill of Jesus.” Under new instructions from the Vatican, the space will now have no supernatural character and will only be considered a place of private worship.
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The Foreign Office said in the letter that Aumont’s message included central themes of the Christian faith, such as conversion and repentance, but also presented problematic theological interpretations. These included a physical link between the Dozere Cross and the Jerusalem Cross, as well as a prophecy that the world would end before the year 2000, which “apparently did not come true.”
“The Cross does not need 7.38 meters of steel or concrete to be recognized. Moved by grace, the Cross is raised every time a heart opens to forgiveness (…) The theme of the Lord’s Second Coming is an integral part of the Christian faith, but the Church is unable to determine the exact date or exact date. “We remember that the Second Coming of Christ is a truth of faith, even though we cannot know or announce the signs, and we risk discrediting any millenarian or chronological interpretation of this coming, which risks fixing the time and mode of the crucifixion,” the Vatican said in a statement.
The document also warned of the dangers of private messages distorting Catholic doctrine or creating practices without church support. According to the document, no personal appearance can replace “the means of grace established by Christ” and faith must point to Jesus, not to autonomous symbols or messages.
The Vatican also emphasized that the Christian faith includes belief in the Second Coming of Christ, but rejected the interpretation of “millennialism,” which seeks to predict a specific date or sign of the end.
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