This is not the same as approval by the whole Church though.
False apparitions seem to fall into two general categories.
Firstly, we have those false apparitions which come at more or less the same time as the genuine Marian apparition, and often in great numbers. Their purpose seems to be to sow confusion by making people believe that it is impossible to tell true from false, and that perhaps everything is false. Secondly, we seem to have those false apparitions which come some time after genuine apparitions and whose purpose is to obscure the true message which has come from apparitions such as Lourdes and Fatima. There is also the general phenomena of opposition to genuine apparitions, which can be both immediate and longer term. He transforms himself at will into an angel of light.