Maria Valtorta's visions match data from the Israel Meteorological Service

Synthèse :

The Italian Catholic mystic Maria Valtorta was born in 1897 and died in 1961. She joined the Third Order of Servites and led a life of prayer withdrawn from the world, in her house in Viareggio, confined to her bed due to ongoing physical suffering. Between 1943 and 1954, she received hundreds of visions and dictations from Christ, Mary, certain saints and her guardian angel.

These "private revelations" included a detailed review of the life of Jesus through more than six hundred immersive visions. Translated into twenty-nine languages, they were published in English first under the title The Poem of the Man-God, subsequently as The Gospel as Revealed to Me.

At Jesus' request, Valtorta painstakingly described the scenes (topography, architecture, customs, fauna, flora, weather conditions, astronomical observations, etc.), portrayed the people (names, origins, functions, physiognomy, temperament, etc.) and transcribed, word for word, their dialogues. She covered some nine thousand manuscript pages in the space of four years.

She also received many theological, cosmogonic and pastoral teachings of striking depth, collected in six other volumes, and maintained an important correspondence with her spiritual director, Father Romualdo Maria Migliorini, with Archbishop Alfonso Carinci and with the Carmelite Blessed Mother Teresa Maria of Saint Joseph.

Through these revelations, Jesus told Valtorta that he wanted to be better known by souls, to support his priests in their ministry, and to re-evangelise the world. But the publication of these writings caused a stir.

Informed of this, Pope Pius XII took the time between 1947 and 1948 to consult the life of Jesus transcribed by Maria Valtorta. On Thursday 26 February 1948, he summoned Father Migliorini to a special audience, accompanied by two witnesses: his confrere Father Berti and their prior Father Cecchin. The Pope concluded the meeting with the following instruction: "Publish the work as it is. There is no need to give an opinion as to its origin, whether it is extraordinary or not. Those who read it will understand."Then he added: "We hear of so many visions and revelations! I'm not saying they're all true, but some of them could be" (words reported under oath by Father Berti in his written testimony of 8 December 1978, and by Father Cecchin to Father Peter Mary Rookey).

The example of the rainy days mentioned by Maria Valtorta throughout her work has been analysed in detail. Professor Emilio Matricciani (from DEIB, the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan) and Dr Liberato De Caro (from IC-CNR, the Institute of Crystallography at the Italian National Research Council) conducted a study published on 9 June 2017 under the title "Literary Fiction or Ancient Astronomical and Meteorological Observations in the Work of Maria Valtorta?". Initially, the two Italian researchers established the annual and monthly averages of rainy days according to the work of Maria Valtorta. Then they compared them with the rainfall databases made available by the Israel Meteorological Service (IMS). In this case, the researchers used rainfall data collected by the IMS between 1990 and 2015 in one hundred and eighty-four localities evenly distributed throughout the Holy Land. They used the study by J. Esper et al (from 2012), "Orbital forcing of tree-ring data" (in Nature Climate Change 2: 862-66), showing that "tree-ring growth reveals an average temperature at the beginning of the Christian era that is surprisingly similar to that of the last fifty years".

The two researchers point out the significant differences that exist from one region to another in the Holy Land, as well as between the seasons. For example, rainfall is more abundant and more frequent towards the Mediterranean and the north (Mediterranean climate), and scarce and infrequent in the Dead Sea depression, the Judean Desert and the Jordan Valley (semi-arid climate). Similarly, while summer is very hot and fairly dry, winter is cool and rainy, especially from October to May.

Emilio Matricciani and Liberato De Caro note that Jesus' public life lasted 1,204 days, of which Maria Valtorta "saw" 380. Of these 380 days described, 52 were more or less rainy. If we exclude the data corresponding to the latitude of Cyprus (outside the area concerned), we obtain an annual frequency of 49 rainy days. They also positioned each of these days on the map of the Holy Land and noted the time of year. The annual value obtained from the IMS database is 50.6 rainy days, very close to the 49 rainy days reported by Maria Valtorta.

What's more, the researchers then looked at the "rainy day pairs". In the work (excluding the latitude of Cyprus) we find an average of 41 pairs of days per year and 38.4 in the IMS data. They note that "once again, there is a surprising correlation between the average values deduced from the work of Maria Valtorta and the IMS".

These similarities are not just annual, but are also found in the monthly frequency of rainy days.

Aller plus loin :

The article by Emilio Matricciani and Liberato De Caro, "Literary Fiction or Ancient Astronomical and Meteorological Observations in the Work of Maria Valtorta?", 9 June 2017. 

En savoir plus :

• The Valtorta Enigma, Volume 1: The astounding accuracy of one woman's private revelation of the Gospel story by Jean-François Lavère, Independently published (July 29, 2023)

• The Valtorta Enigma, Volume 2: Hidden truths unveiled: how the writings of Maria Valtorta clarify many Biblical questions by Jean-François Lavère,‎ Independently published (November 12, 2024)

• Maria Valtorta's Life of Christ: Treasured by Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed María Inés Teresa Arias, and Blessed Gabriel Allegra by Fr. Anthony Pillari and Stephen Austin, ‎ Regina Angelorum Press, LLC (March 29, 2019)