[2] After consultations with his spiritual advisor, in October 1972 he and two other priests met in a church in Gera Lario in Como, Italy and published a notice of the movement in some Catholic and local newspapers.
In September 1973, twenty-five of the eighty Catholic priests who had by then joined the movement held the first national gathering of the MMP in San Vittorino near Rome.
The book shows the dates (and if relevant the locations) of the messages and is thus also a record of Father Gobbi's travels as he holds prayer cenacles.
In October 1994, Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan wrote a letter in which he stated that some officials within the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican had informed him that they believe Father Gobbi's locutions to be his own meditations and not messages from the Virgin Mary.
The MMP therefore continues to meet regularly in Rome with the permission and participation of Catholic cardinals and bishops who attribute the locutions to Holy Mary.
Pope John Paul II, who had a personal devotion to the Virgin Mary, met with and celebrated mass with Father Gobbi in his private papal chapel in the Vatican on an annual basis for several years.
In November 1993, John Paul II provided an official papal blessing for the American branch of the MMP in St. Francis, Maine, but did not offer an imprimatur for the book.
The MMP places special emphasis on the power of praying the Holy Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration as effective means of strengthening the Church.