“”According to many (most) Catholics Mary spoke to three peasant girls at Fatima, she spoke to Bernadette at Lourdes, she spoke to Juan Diego at Guadalupe, etc.””
These have been approved by the Church as authentic ,so I believe them to be true.
As in the case of Fatima it’s pretty clear that communism has spread it’s error’s throughout the world.
As my dear friend Kolokotronis once told me that his grandmother and other members in his family said to have regular conversations with the Blessed Mother and no one doubted they did.
There is nothing heretical about this
This is true, OR. No one thought it particularly odd either. There are places on earth and in various cultures where such goings on are not all that remarkable. As for the Fatima and other apparitions of Panagia being heretical, well, so far as I know, only one of them has likely strayed into heresy and that is the recent one in the former Yugoslavia. Beliefs about visions of the Most Holy Theotokos are theologoumenna, pious beliefs which can be held, or not. There is no requirement that a Roman Catholic believe in them.