After decades, and controversy, the Vatican has authorized public worship at a shrine in Bosnia, where a once tranquil village has become a major pilgrimage site.

Pope Francis has approved a Catholic spiritual devotion centred in Medjugorje, a town in Bosnia that has been steeped in controversy over whether the Virgin Mary appears to local people, the Vatican said on Thursday.

Catholic worshipers who claim to have seen and spoken to the Virgin Mary at a Bosnian landmark received mixed messages from the Vatican on Thursday after the Church refused to say whether their visions were real — while still supporting worship at the site.

The Vatican is providing its long-awaited assessment on one of the more contested aspects of Roman Catholicism in recent years: the reported “apparitions” of the Virgin Mary at an otherwise unremarkable village in southern Bosnia.

While it offers no definitive judgment on the supernatural authenticity of the alleged apparitions, the Vatican’s report highlights the abundant good fruits that have come from Medjugorje.

Vatican gives green light to devotion at Bosnian site in Medjugorje where Virgin Mary is said to have appeared

The Vatican’s doctrine office didn’t declare that the reported apparitions in Medjugorje were authentic or of supernatural origin.