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MEDJUGORJE is a town located in Hercegovina, Bosnia and Hercegovina, around 25 km southwest of Mostar and close to the border of Croatia. Today the town is best known due to apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary which appeared to six Herzegovinian Croats since 24 June 1981, and is now visited by pilgrims from around the entire world as a shrine.

The name Medugorje is of Slavic origin and it translates as "area between two mountains" in Croatian. At an altitude of 200 metres above sea level, it has a mild Mediterranean climate. The town consists of an ethnically-homogeneous Croat population of over 4000, and the Catholic Parish (local administrative and religious area) consists of five neighbouring villages (Medjugorje, Bijakovići, Vionica, Miletina and Surmanci).

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country on the Balkan peninsula of Southern Europe with an area of 19,741 sq-mi. Its 2007 residential population is estimated at 4 million.
Formerly one of the six federal units constituting the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina gained its independence during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a parliamentary democracy that is transforming its economy into a market-oriented system, a potential candidate for membership in the European Union and NATO.

The country is home to three ethnic "constituent peoples": Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. Regardless of ethnicity, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina is often identified in English as a Bosnian. In Bosnia however, the distinction between a Bosnian and a Herzegovinian is maintained as a regional, rather than an ethnic distinction. The country is politically decentralized and comprised of two governing entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, with District Brčko as a de facto third entity.
Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the south, Bosnia and Herzegovina is mostly landlocked, except for 26 kilometres of the Adriatic Sea coastline, centered around the town of Neum. The interior of the country is mountainous in the center and south, hilly in the northwest, and flat in the northeast. The nation's capital and largest city is Sarajevo, seated between several high mountains. Sarajevo was the host site of the 1984 Winter Olympic Games.

The region of Bosnia is the largest geographic region of the modern state with moderate continental climate, marked by hot summers and cold, snowy winters. Smaller Herzegovina is the southern tip of the country, with Mediterranean climate and topography. Bosnia and Herzegovina's natural resources are abundant.


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