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.

The Vatican on Thursday gave the green light for Catholics to continue flocking to a southern Bosnian village where children reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary.

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.