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June 24 is the solemn feast of St. John the Baptist in the Catholic Church.

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It is also the first day of the apparitions of the Queen of Peace on the so-called Podbrdo Hill in Medjugorje. However, the group of seers was not completly formed  and the Virgin Mary herself asked that her feast be on June 25.

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Indeed, that day, Marija Pavlovic's sister saw the Queen of Peace but was prevented from coming the following days. She was therefore not part of the group of six seers. She only saw the Virgin once. Often interviewed since, she says that she was filled by this apparition and that she thinks to see the Blessed Virgin Mary in Heaven again.

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On this day of June 24, it is also a day dedicted  in Medjugorje for a March for Peace. Early in the morning, parishioners and pilgrims leave from the Franciscan monastery of Saint-Anthony in Humac  and usually arrive at St James Church in Medjugorje around 10 a.m. This March for Peace began in 1992. At the beginning, the priests made this March by carrying the Blessed Sacrament and then by carrying the statue of Our Lady. Now the priests make this Walk carrying the Cross of Christ followed by parishioners and pilgrims from all over the world. The Walk is about 11 kilometers long.

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Who is St John the Baptist ? Here are the words of Benedict XVI during the Angelus of June 24, 2012  in Rome:

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“Today, June 24, we celebrate the solemnity of the birth of Saint John the Baptist. Apart from the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist is the only saint whose birth celebrates the liturgy, and he does so because it is closely linked to the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God. From the maternal womb, in fact, John is the precursor of Jesus: his prodigious conception is announced by the angel to Mary, as the sign that "nothing is impossible with God" (Lk 1, 37), six months before the great wonder which gives us salvation, the union of God with man by the action of the Holy Spirit. The four Gospels give great importance to the figure of John the Baptist as a prophet who concludes the Old Testament and inaugurates the New, indicating in Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah, the Consecrated Person of the Lord. Indeed, Jesus himself will speak of John in these terms: “He is he of whom it is written: Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you to prepare your way before you. Truly I tell you, among the children of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist; and yet the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he ”(Mt 11, 10-11).  

 

(Source: www.vatican.va )