Cardinal Giuseppe Siri and Maria Valtorta
Cardinal Giuseppe Siri (1906-1989) became Archbishop of Genoa in 1946, at the age of 40. He was made cardinal in 1953 and became the first president of the Italian Episcopal Conference (1958‑1965). He was a prominent figure: a journalist called him "the unelected pope" in a book dedicated to him. At the conclaves following the deaths of Pius XII (1958), John XXIII (1963), and Paul VI (1978), he was the natural candidate of the most conservative prelates. In his Actions, one notes the Home he granted, in Genoa, in 1976, to Abbé Jean-François Guérin. This was the founding act of the Saint Martin community, which has grown significantly in France.
He had two occasions to address the case of Maria Valtorta:
- in 1956: by giving Father Corrado Berti, who requested it, his response concerning the imprimatur and the preface of Maria Valtorta's work.
- in 1985: by receiving Cardinal Josef Ratzinger’s response to a request for clarification sent by a priest from his diocese.
The request for imprimatur (1956)[edit | edit source]
When the publication of the first volume of the Work was imminent, Father Berti wanted to make a last attempt to obtain an imprimatur, or at least a statement that could be, in a certain way, equivalent. To this end, he sent a letter to Cardinal Siri, accompanied (it seems[1]) by at least one of the typed fascicles of Maria Valtorta’s Work[2].
Translation[edit | edit source]
185/56ARCHDIOCESE OF GENOA
March 6, 1956
Very Reverend Father,
I immediately respond to your three requests:
1 — The impression I got from reading the manuscript is excellent. Sole observation: people speak in the literary style of our time, and not that of the era[3]. At least, that is how it seems to me.
2 — I would gladly read more. The larger volume justifies a further judgment, good though modest like mine.
3 — The imprimatur is not my affair[4]. Since, in a certain way, the Supreme[5] has been involved[6], it would be dangerous to act without consulting it. As for the preface, I do not have the courage to write one.
With my most cordial blessing, please accept, Reverend Father, the expression of my respectful sentiments.
+ card. Giuseppe Siri
Cardinal Josef Ratzinger’s letter (1985)[edit | edit source]
In 1985, photocopies of a letter to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, were circulated. The letter, dated January 31, 1985, was addressed to Cardinal Siri; it was the response to a question received by the Congregation from a Capuchin friar from Genoa, whose name was obscured on some published photocopies[7].
It is from this letter that one first discovers, by reading the protocol number (144/58[8]), that the Holy Office had proceeded after the death of Pius XII, to a recomposition of Maria Valtorta’s dossier with a view to placing it on the Index. Some documents had apparently disappeared, including Pius XII’s rejection on February 17, 1949, of a proposal by the Holy Office to condemn Maria Valtorta’s work. The author of the article in the Osservatore Romano is forced to rely on his memories.
In this letter to Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger advises against the distribution of Maria Valtorta’s work based on the dossier he discovers. He considers it unhealthy not absolutely, but for the category of “most vulnerable” faithful. It is assumed he refers to poorly informed readers who would confuse Maria Valtorta’s work with the canonical Gospel, a theme on which he will insist later.
Around the 1990s, Cardinal J. Ratzinger had the opportunity to read Maria Valtorta’s work personally and to grant a "conditional imprimatur", allowing the reading and distribution of the work to continue on the condition that it not be read as equivalent to the canonical Gospel[9], which Jesus himself had requested in the work[10].
This position was reiterated in the press release of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of February 22, 2025.
Notes and references[edit | edit source]
- ↑ We do not have the text of Father Corrado Berti’s letter.
- ↑ Excerpt from Maria Valtorta, What to Think? Elements of Discernment - p. 125.
- ↑ The tone of the opinions of prelates at that time (Mgr Alfonso Carinci, Mgr Ugo Emilio Lattanzi, Father Gabriele M. Roschini), apart from those of the Holy Office, was to judge Maria Valtorta’s work as a “good book,” astonishing in knowledge, capable of doing good to readers, but without endorsing the descriptive parts that characterize it.
- ↑ According to the canon law code in force at the time, the imprimatur could only be granted by “the Ordinary (bishop) proper to the author, by the Ordinary of the place where the books and images are published, or the Ordinary of the place where they are printed.” (CIC 1917, article 1385 §2) The Archbishop of Genoa was not concerned by any of these cases.
- ↑ At that time, “the Supreme” was the Congregation of the Holy Office, thus called because it was superior to any episcopal authority. Its head was in fact the pope himself.
- ↑ A letter of Maria Valtorta mentioning the challenge by the Holy Office to the imprimatur granted by Mgr Costantino Barneschi, cites Mgr Siri as favorable to the work and aware of its troubles: “Why do His Eminence Mgr Siri, as well as Mgr Raffa, Mgr Crovella, and Mgr Carinci, etc., not give their support? Because they all have a great fear of the Holy Office and their Eminences Marchetti-Salvaggiani and Ottaviani, who make the weather, even disregarding the will of His Holiness” (Letters to Mother Teresa Maria, Volume 2, letter of December 16, 1948, p. 176.)
- ↑ This is Brother Umberto Losacco cited in several sources (e.g. Il cattolico). This religious currently holds responsibilities within the General Secretariat of his order.
- ↑ The original file bore the protocol number 355/45.
- ↑ “It is reaffirmed that the alleged 'visions,' 'revelations,' and 'communications' contained in the writings of Maria Valtorta, or in any case attributed to her, cannot be considered as of supernatural origin, but must be considered as simple literary forms used by the Author to narrate, in her own way, the life of Jesus Christ.”
- ↑ In a dictation from January 28, 1947, Jesus clarifies the nature of the work entrusted to Maria Valtorta: “The work delivered to men through little John [=Maria Valtorta] is not a canonical book. Nevertheless, it is an inspired book that I grant you to help you understand certain passages of the canonical books [...]” (The Notebooks from 1945 to 1950, CEV, p. 330). This passage unambiguously establishes that The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me does not present itself as a new gospel but as an inspired work intended to illuminate the Revelation already given and to foster a living knowledge of Christ.