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.

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.