The Poem of the Man-God
The Poem of the Man God is a multi volume book of about four thousand pages on the life of Jesus Christ written by the Italian mystic Maria Valtorta. It was first published in Italian in 1956 and has since been translated into 10 languages and is available worldwide. The book is based on over 15,000 handwritten pages produced by Maria Valtorta between 1943 and 1947. During these years she reported Visions of Jesus and Mary and claimed personal conversations with Jesus.
Currently the official position of the Holy See with respect to the book is less than clear and since 1992 the Vatican has decided to remain silent on the work, although the book has received the imprimatur and approval of several Catholic bishops. Given the endorsements provided for the book in the visions of the Virgin Mary reported at Medjugorje in 1981, if and when the Holy See selects a position on Medjugorje, it may also be viewed as having selected a position on the work of Maria Valtorta.
The Fifteen Thousand Handwritten Pages
Maria Valtorta was bed ridden in Viareggio Italy for most of her life due to complications from being struck in the back at random while walking on a street. On the morning of Good Friday 1943 she reported a vision in which Jesus appeared and spoke to her. She reported many more visions and conversations with Jesus and Saint Mary and said that Jesus had asked her to record her visions in writing. She continued to write her visions in her notebooks until 1947.
The Poem of the Man God is not, however, a sequential transcription of her notebooks, because her reported visions were not in chronological order. For instance, she wrote her vision of The Last Supper on March 9th 1945 while her vision of the Beatitudes during the Sermon on the Mount was written more than two months later on May 24th 1945. In the absence of computers in 1947, her priest (Father Romuald Migliorini OSM) was surprised that once the handwritten pages were reassembled, episode by episode like a deck of cards, the flow of the text was smooth. The book itself follows the life of Jesus in chronological form, with footnotes referring to the dates on which she wrote each episode.
The handwritten pages were also surprising to her priest and others in that they included no overwrites, corrections or revisions and seemed somewhat like dictations. The fact that she often suffered from heart and lung ailments during the period of the visions made the natural flow of the text even more unusual. Some readers were struck by the fact that the sentences attributed to Jesus in the visions had a distinct and recognizable tone and style that was different from the rest of the text.
Most of the episodes she wrote have a uniform format and structure. Valtorta first describes a scene, often with picturesque details of the background, the trees, the mountains and the weather conditions on that day in the Holy Land. For instance, her prelude to the Sermon on the Mount written on May 22nd 1945 depicts the road on which Jesus is walking, states that it was a clear day on which Mount Hermon could be seen by Jesus but Lake Merom could not be seen. In some episodes she mentions the colors of the clothing worn by Jesus or the Apostles.
The consistency of her almost eyewitness-like descriptions of the topography of the terrain in the Holy Land has been surprising to some experts. A geologist, Dr. Vittorio Tredici found the detailed knowledge of the geological and mineralogical aspects of Palestine present in her notes unexplainable in view of the fact that she never left Italy and was bed-ridden much of her life. A biblical archeologist, Father Dreyfus, noted that her work includes the names of several small towns which are absent from the Old and New Testaments and are only known to a few experts.
The scenes Valtorta wrote usually involve detailed conversations between people. For instance, in the Sermon on the Mount episode written on May 22nd 1945 Jesus is met on the road by Saint Philip the Apostle and their detailed conversation is included. The scene then describes how the other Apostles come down the mountain to greet Jesus and how the Sermon on the Mount begins.
Valtorta gives particular emphasis to the words she attributes to Jesus. While the Gospel of Matthew refers to the Beatitudes in a few paragraphs (Matthew 5:3-12), the text for the single Beatitude “poor in the spirit” spoken by Jesus in her vision is one and a half pages long. The full text of the Sermon on the Mount that she wrote in her notebook and attributed to Jesus takes three episodes from May24th to 27th 1945 and is over 30 pages long. The fact that her text of the Beatitudes still has the same eight or nine fold structure as the Beatitudes in the Gospel (but is far more detailed) characterizes her notebooks.
Her visions do, however, report parables, miracles and episodes in the life of Jesus that are not present in the Gospel. For instance, the episode she wrote on February 28th 1946 reports that in preparation for His Passion, Jesus visited the town of Kerioth to say farewell and performed a miracle, curing Anne of Kerioth on her deathbed. In this episode Jesus instructs the cured Anne of Kerioth to forever tend to and comfort Mary of Simon, the mother of Judas Iscariot who will be heartbroken upon the betrayal by her son and the deaths of Jesus and Judas in the near future.
The fact that Valtorta wrote each multi-page episode as a much more detailed version of an episode in the Bible and her inclusion of as yet unreported events in the life of Jesus generated both interest and controversy from the moment the book was offered for publication.
Publication Controversy
Maria Valtorta was at first reluctant to have her notebooks published, but based on the advice of her priest, in 1947she agreed to their publication. The handwritten pages were typed and bound by her priest Father Romuald Migliorini OSM and Father Corrado Berti, O.S.M.
The two priests approached their contacts at the Vatican with the typed manuscript and in February 1948 Reverend Augustin Bea, S.J. who was then the confessor to Pope Pius XII bypassed the Vatican hierarchy and facilitated a private audience for them and Father Andrea Checchin with the Pope. The meeting was mentioned in L'Osservatore Romano's list of audiences and thereafter Father Berti provided a signed affidavit that recorded Pope Pius XII as saying: “Publish this work as is. There is no need to give an opinion about its origin, whether it is extraordinary or not. Whoever reads it, will understand."
Assuming that he had a verbal papal approval, Father Berti then approached the official hierarchy at the publishing office of the Roman Curia where he met serious resistance and opposition. Furthermore, one year later, in 1949, the Holy Office condemned the work and confiscated Father Berti’s typed copy, but Father Berti returned the handwritten pages to Maria Valtorta.
From the beginning, by its nature, the work generated high emotions among those who approved or disapproved of it. Those opposed to the work saw it as an affront to their beliefs for it claimed to elaborate the Gospel. Those who supported it often seemed amazed by its consistent flow as an elaboration of the Gospel and felt that the text attributed to Jesus was extraordinary.
Eventually, a lay publisher, Emilio Pisani, decided to publish the work in 1956, despite the opposition to it at the Holy Office. Pisani published the book in four volumes of about one thousand pages each, one volume per year through 1959. When the third volume was being published in 1958 Pope Pius XII died and was succeeded by Pope John XXIII. In 1959 when the fourth volume was being published, the Holy Office recommended that the work be placed on the Index of Forbidden Books and in 1959 Pope John XXIII issued a decree to that effect.
Maria Valtorta died in 1961, deeply hurt and rejected by the fact that her work remained on the Index of Forbidden Books. But in 1965 the Index of Forbidden Books itself was abolished by Pope Paul VI who succeeded Pope John XXIII. Valtorta supporters immediately claimed that this in effect nullified the suppression of 1959 since the Index no longer existed. Those opposed to the book considered the abolition of the Index as not reversing the Church’s opinion of the work.
At the moment the official position of the Catholic Church with respect to the book is less than clear. The church does not endorse the book, yet does not ban it either, although church officials (including Cardinal Ratzinger in 1985) have made occasional comments about it. The last formal action taken by the Vatican with respect to the book was in 1992, when Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi, the Secretary General of the Italian Bishops' Conference, wrote to the publisher Emilio Pisani. In his letter, Cardinal Tettamanzi requested that a paragraph be added to the first few pages of the book disclaiming any supernatural origin for the work. The publisher assumes that the letter indicates that the Italian Bishops' Conference sees nothing in the work that contradicts the doctrines of the Church, yet some detractors claim that the letter intended to classify the work as fiction. Since 1992 the Catholic Church has chosen to remain silent on its position with respect to the work.
Vatican's Dilemma
Some observers have suggested that The Poem of the Man God poses a delicate dilemma for the Holy See and that the vagueness of the Church’s current position and its continued silence are indeed a matter of prudent necessity. The Vatican’s dilemma needs to be understood by both Valtorta’s supporters and detractors.
On one hand, the Vatican can not suddenly declare a new and more detailed version of the Gospel every time a mystic produces a manuscript. Hence the resistance to the book from deep within the Holy See’s hierarchy needs to be understood by Valtorta’s supporters.
On the other hand, the Holy See can no longer issue an outright condemnation of The Poem on the Man God because of its strong following among Catholics worldwide, including clergy such as Archbishop George Hamilton Pearce, S. M. and Bishop Roman Danylak who provided his imprimatur for the book. Further complexity is added by the fact that the Vatican also wishes to remain silent on the visions at Medjugorje, neither approving nor disputing them. The Medjugorje visions by Marija Pavlovic and Vicka Ivankovic have both stated that Maria Valtorta’s records of her conversations with Jesus are truthful. According to Ivankovic, in 1981 the Virgin Mary told her at Medjugorje: “If a person wants to know Jesus he should read Maria Valtorta”.
If at some future date the Vatican decides to approve the Medjugorje messages, it may also have to acknowledge Valtorta’s work as valid. Hence the silence of the Church on the book needs to be understood by Valtorta’s detractors.
In the meantime, Valtorta’s supporters continue to publish the book. They view the current silence of the Holy See as leaving them with the "Whoever reads it will understand" authorization that they attribute to Pope Pius XII.