Medjugorje prophecy looking more and more bogus

A few days ago I said that I searched the Medjugorje messages from 1984-2010 for any reference to the Philippines being the global spiritual center and came up empty-handed. Since then I've received a response from the webmaster of medjugorje.ws to my inquiry on this. According to Marek over the last ten years he's read all the messages from 1981 onwards but has not come across any mention of the Philippines. Although this doesn't close the book on the claim, Marek's input heightens my confidence that the "prophecy" is just an urban legend. It could be an outright hoax, a pious fabrication, or some actual fact which after having being passed from one person to another has been embellished, edited, mangled, mistransmitted and thus mutated into what it is.

Let's just backtrack a bit and look at the claim. Bernardo Lopez, a journalist in an article in Business World over five years ago wrote:

It is reported that Our Lady of Medjugorje gave a message saying that the Philippines will one day be a global spiritual center. It is hard to imagine how a poor Third World nation, 70% of whose populace live below the poverty line, would be a spiritual mecca for an ailing world full of wars and chaos.... Is the healing ministry of Sister Raquel and the RVM sisters the first step towards fulfilling the Medjugorje message? Nobody knows.

Allison Lopez of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in December 2007 tells us, "In Medjugorje, Mary’s message was that the Philippines would one day become a global spiritual center. Was the message about Montemaria?" Bingo P. Dejaresco, in the now apparently defunct Bohol Chronicle website wrote, "A message from Our Lady of Medjugorge spoke of the Philippines to become the 'global spiritual center.' Will this become a reality soon?" And someone with the handle georgemortel13 states in his video, "After her appearances in Lourdes and Fatima, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared last in Medjugorje - leaving one prophecy for the Philippines: that the nation will become the global spiritual healing center of the world."

Bernie Lopez is affiliated with the Mother Ignacia Ministry and runs a YouTube channel under the handle eastwind7. The channel features his videos of miraculous healings by Sister Raquel Reodica and Father Fernando Suarez. Given his religious zeal, I emailed him, telling him of my failure to find the Medjugorje message that contains the prophecy and asked for his source for the report. He replied within the day and admitted that his sources were second and third hand reports and were unreliable, that if I couldn't find the message then perhaps there is no such prophecy. I was kind of surprised by his candidness and honesty. Kudos to him for not resorting to self-justification maneuvers.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But of course if the prophecy doesn't exist then quite naturally there won't be any evidence for it. The day I contacted Marek I also emailed the exact same missive to medjugorje.org, asking for information on the 1981 to 1983 messages and stating that I am looking for the message that contains the Philippines-as-spiritual-center prophecy. I have yet to hear from the site.

I'm not holding my breath on this claim. My money is on the hypothesis that it's false.