The 700 extraordinary visions of the Gospel received by Maria Valtorta

In the middle of the 20th century, Italian mystic Maria Valtorta received almost 700 visions of vivid scenes from Jesus' life. She recorded them in a set of ten volumes, published in English under the title The Gospel as Revealed to Me (formerly The Poem of the Man-God). This comprehensive work follows Christ throughout his public life. The 700 highly detailed scenes constitute an unprecedented and extremely rich mine of information. The visionary even claimed to be able to perceive smells, sounds, conversations and the general atmosphere, as if she were physically in the scene. The many serious studies carried out on this very factual material all confirm the extraordinary nature of her visions, which are also perfectly congruent with the Gospels and the society and physical world of Christ's time.

Maria Valtorta aged 15. CC0/wikimedia

Reasons to believe:

To record the hundreds of visions she experienced, Maria Valtorta wrote more than 13,000 pages by hand, without a single erasure, each time providing an abundance of details, including: 70 ethnic groups, 750 characters listed and described in François-Michel Debroise's reference site, 220 villages, 110 geographical locations, 150 plant species, 200 animal species, 50 mineral species, etc. All this data was studied (in particular by Jean-François Lavère) and validated by experts, who verified that 10,000 details contained no error or anachronism!

From the 5,000 geographical and historical indications contained in these visions, it has also been possible to reconstitute a day-to-day calendar of Jesus' wherebouts with specific dates for each scene of the Gospel in our current Gregorian calendar calculated from the ancient Mosaic calendar and later Julian calendar. This reconstruction also corresponds perfectly to the (independent) calendar of lunar phases for the more than 100 visions that give us the position and phase of the moon. These constitute tangible proofs of the supernatural authenticity of Valtorta's visions, which deserve to be more widely known.

The story as a whole is in perfect agreement with the Gospel; in particular, it offers simple answers to many puzzles that often baffle exegetes, and provides many proofs of the veracity of the Gospels.

Maria Valtorta's work is truly unique in many ways; there is no comparable work in the whole of world literature.

Summary:

How should we approach Maria Valtorta's visions?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the 2008 Synod of Bishops on the Word of God stress the importance of making a clear distinction between the Word of God and private revelations:

The Word of God is set down in writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the canonical Sacred Scriptures; together with Tradition, these constitute the fundamental bedrock to which the Church and the faithful refer in matters of faith.
Private revelations, on the other hand, are messages delivered by heavenly beings to individuals chosen by God to help the faithful "live more fully by [Christ's definitive Revelation] in a certain period of history" without improving or completing it (CCC § 67).

In fact, "even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries." (CCC § 66). In the words of Cardinal Prospero Lambertini (the future Pope Benedict XIV), private revelations require an"assent of human faith in accordance with the rules of prudence, which present them to us as probable and credible in a spirit of piety "(De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, 1734), and it is up to the Church to assess their authenticity.

These readings are not indispensable for salvation, but they are one of the means offered by Heaven to help us on our earthly pilgrimage. In this respect, they are not negligible and remain a matter of personal choice that must be respected.

Pope Benedict XIV said: "You can withhold your assent from such revelations and turn away from them, as long as you do so with the appropriate modesty, for good reasons and without any intention of contempt."

The theologian Karl Rahner wrote that "the satisfactory answer to the question of the theological nature of 'private' revelations posterior to Christ and addressed to the Church, would be this: the essential point of a private revelation does not consist in an affirmation about the content of the common revelation, a sort of accidental determination of this common revelation, and/or materially identical with it. Rather, private revelations have by nature an imperative character: namely, what is the conduct to be taken by Christendom in a given historical situation."

On this question, we must follow the advice of Saint Paul, who said: "Do not quench the Spirit, nor despise the gift of prophecy, but test everything, and keep what is good."(1 Thess 5:19-21).

It is in this spirit that Mary of Nazareth understands and shares the writings of Maria Valtorta, in full adherence and obedience to the Roman Catholic Church.

We must remember here that the Church has not made a definitive pronouncement about Maria Valtorta and her writings. These were at a certain point in time on the Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum and criticized - as were Teresa of Avila, Luisa Piccarreta, Sister Faustina, Yvonne-Aimée de Malestroit, Padre Pio and so many other saints - but never so for doctrinal or moral reasons.

As explained by the Maria Valtorta's Readers Group website, the two underlying reasons for placing Valtorta's The Gospel as Revealed to Me on the Index were the lack of an imprimatur (which, incidentally, was due to the excessive pressure put on the bishops who were supportive of the work!) and the censors' perceptions about form rather than substance. Finally, it should be noted that the Church's infallible Magisterium is not responsible for disciplinary sanctions and that the Index was abolished in 1966, with the Church saying that she "trusts the mature conscience of the faithful " (Cardinal Ottaviani, 14 June 1966).

It should also be noted that Maria Valtorta's writings were read and defended by a number of important figures such as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Cardinal Bea, Archbishop Alphonso Carinci, etc. In 1963, Monsignor Pasquale Macchi, Pope Paul VI's private secretary, testified that Pope Paul VI had asked him to donate the complete works of Maria Valtorta to the major seminary in Milan when he was archbishop of that city.

In 1973, Maria Valtorta's remains were transferred to the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata in Florence, where they now rest.

Maria Valtorta’s work or parts of her work have also received imprimaturs from multiple bishops, and Bishop Roman Danylak, S.T.L., J.U.D., issued a letter of endorsement of the English translation of The Poem of the Man-God. (Note that he has a License in Sacred Theology and Doctorates in both Canon Law and Civil Law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome). The conclusion of his letter states: “This major work of Maria Valtorta, The Poem of the Man-God (The Gospel as Revealed to Me, is in perfect consonance with the canonical Gospels, with the traditions and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.”

It is also important to listen to the discernment of the great theologians who have studied it. This is the case, for example, of world-renowned theologians such as Father Gabriel Roschini, Mgr René Laurentin and Blessed Gabriel Maria Allegra: all three discovered Maria Valtorta late in life and devoted their last efforts and writings to her.

Father Gabriel Roschini (1900-1977), a great Mariologist of world renown and founder of the Marianum, the Pontifical Theological Institute dedicated to Mary in Rome, says that, of the 900 publications he authored, the most beautiful is his last, on the Virgin Mary in the works of Maria Valtorta. In the introduction to this book, he writes: "The Mariology that emerges from Maria Valtorta's writings was a real discovery for me. No other Marian writing, not even the sum of all those I have read and studied, had been able to give me such a clear, vivid, complete, luminous and fascinating idea of Mary, God's masterpiece, which was both simple and sublime."

In 2011, Mgr René Laurentin (1917-2017), an expert at the Council and a great Mariologist of international renown, recognised Maria Valtorta as the most accurate of the four visionaries he examined (Maria d'Agreda, Anne-Catherine Emmerich and Consuelo), in his comparative study with François-Michel Debroise. This prompted him to publish a study of Mary's historical then prophetic charisma.

Blessed Gabriel Maria Allegra (1907-1976), a Franciscan priest beatified in 2012, best known as the founder of the Hong Kong Bible Institute and the translator of the first complete Bible into Chinese, wrote in his opuscule Critique, Notes, Letters on Maria Valtorta's Poem of the Man-God (Macao, 1970) that this work, "which reads like a novel, but is not a novel, [is] a priceless treasure of universal literature."At the end of his life, he gave lectures on Maria Valtorta, including at the Vatican, leading several pontiffs to read her work.

We encourage anyone interested in this subject to become acquainted with the life and visions of Maria Valtorta, and not to stop at a few quick, often caricatural comments that can be found on the Internet. You can find endorsements, documents and proponents of Valtorta's writings here and in this extensive list of references.

This work is touching an ever-increasing number of readers (there are countless testimonies) and seems to mainly bolster faith, loving contemplation of the mystery of Christ, and to respond to the spiritual thirst that many faithful have today.

In these matters, then, where each of us must seek to follow the Holy Spirit and listen to his or her own conscience, in as enlightened a way as possible, we must remember and truly live, all together, the great advice attributed to Saint Augustine, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity".

The Mary of Nazareth editorial staff

Beyond reasons to believe:

Reading the ten volumes of The Gospel as Revealed to Me and the precise descriptions they contain gives the extraordinary impression of being at Jesus' side in the most important moments of his life, not unlike what the apostles saw, heard, and felt. It's a very striking and unique experience that has led to countless conversions and personal revival of faith in Christ.