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Legal action by Vassula Ryden shuts down critical web site

CWN - May 11, 2012

Vassula Ryden, a Swiss mystic who has claimed to receive personal messages from Jesus, has taken legal action to shut down a web site operated by one of her critics.

Maria Laura Pio, who operated a site that provided information and analysis critical of Ryden’s alleged visions, has announced that she will shut down the site at the end of May 2012, after receiving a letter from an attorney in Wales threatening legal action against her. The attorney claimed that Pio’s site, entitled “infovassula,” misleads visitors by creating the impression that it is authorized by Vassula Ryden.

Pio, who had already successfully defended herself against a similar legal action brought by Ryden in Belgium, announced on her site that “I do not have the means financially nor mentally to face another lawsuit,” so she has acceded to the lawyer’s demands.

In 1995 the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a warning about the work of Vassula Ryden, saying that her visions should not be regarded as supernatural, that her statements contain doctrinal errors, and that she has been “creating an ecumenical disorder” by sharing regularly in the sacraments of the Catholic Church although she is Greek Orthodox. The Vatican statement instructed bishops “that no opportunity may be provided in their dioceses for the dissemination of her ideas.”

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