Are Catholics required to believe in approved apparitions and private revelations?
No. The Catholic Church distinguishes between public Revelation and private revelations.
Public Revelation was completed and closed with Christ and the death of the last Apostle; it is preserved in the Deposit of Faith and requires divine and Catholic faith from all believers. In contrast, private revelations (such as apparitions at Lourdes, Fatima, or Guadalupe) do not belong to the deposit of faith.
Even when the Church formally investigates and approves a private revelation as worthy of belief, Catholics are not strictly obliged to believe it as a condition of salvation. Their legitimate role is not to improve or add to Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help people live by it more fully in a particular historical period.
Sources
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 67
Awaiting review by the chaplaincy. Written in our own words; the Church's own texts are the authority.