Beth Racine had just come out of church after confession in Medjugorje and was leaning against a wall when something caught her eye. A disc covered the sun. She saw swirling colors to the sides — red on one side and white on the other — that made her think of the image of Divine Mercy.

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.

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 the Vatican did not confirm that the Marian apparitions were real, it recognized that the devotion of the faithful to the site is undeniable.

In June 1981, six children aged 10 to 16 claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared to them on a hilltop near the town.

Pope Francis has expressed some doubts on the messages, commenting in 2013 on the Virgin Mary’s particularly chatty nature at Medjugorje.