Father Corrado Berti: memories of Emilio Pisani

1973 - On the left, E. Pisani at 39 years old behind Marta Diciotti. In the center, Éroma Antonini, a neighbor from Viareggio. On the right, Fr. Berti in conversation with Fr. Allessandrini, Prior of the Santissima Annunziata. Archives of the Maria Valtorta Heritage Foundation

In the introduction to his book Pros and Cons of Maria Valtorta, Emilio Pisani shares his memories of his encounter with Father Berti, bold promoter of the work at the Vatican. This account by Emilio Pisani is that of an eyewitness, particularly valuable for understanding the genesis of the events.

Memories of Father Berti

When I had the idea for this book, I immediately associated it with the memory of Father Berti. He would have rejoiced at the decision to publish the full certificates from 1952, which illustrious personalities of the time brought him after reading the booklets of the typed copy of the Work of Maria Valtorta, still unpublished at the time. But my intention to add, alongside the assessments of later years, opposing positions to the Work would certainly have upset him. We were united by the desire to serve the same cause. As a priest, religious, and professor in a faculty of theology, he had enough gifts to impose himself and the will to do so. As for me, as a young university student busy managing work relations with the Roman clients of my father's printing house, I learned a lot from him and was entirely devoted to him. Our esteem and affection were mutual, and we shared the same dedication to the Work of Maria Valtorta. Later on, when his strength began to decline, I started to disagree with him: I thought it necessary to find a more appropriate way to handle Maria Valtorta's writings.

Father Berti and Father Migliorini

For thirty years, Father Berti was the manager of the Valtortian scene following Father Migliorini, but he was never the spiritual director of the sick Maria Valtorta as his colleague was, about whom I will now speak.

Father Romualdo Maria Migliorini, of the Servite Order, was a Missionary in Canada and South Africa, where he was in charge as apostolic prefect. A group photo shows him in Cape Town with seventeen missionary bishops. Although the only one not a bishop, he carries the pectoral cross like the others, as a mark of his dignity. Upon his return to Italy in 1939, he was sent to Viareggio as prior of the Sant’Andrea convent; he became the confessor and spiritual director of Maria Valtorta in 1942 and played a decisive role with her, which we referred to earlier in the chapter Maria Valtorta and her works.

I must add a clarification: everything Maria Valtorta wrote by hand, with pen, on common notebooks, Father Migliorini typed, making several carbon copies. Later, he began producing smaller booklets, which he distributed as writings dictated from Heaven to an anonymous spokesperson under his spiritual direction.

He did this unbeknownst to Maria Valtorta and against her will. When she learned this, she disapproved of this rash and imprudent distribution of her writings. It even happened that, with the intention of providing her some comfort in her infirmity, people in ignorance brought her one of these booklets to read, which she had to accept with gratitude. Readers passed these copies among themselves, and some "returned to the source," as Maria Valtorta said sadly, when she was alone with Marta.

Another source of discord came from Father Migliorini's relationship with two women from Camaiore — a neighboring town — who should have followed a vocation in line with their specific charism, one as a religious and the other as a laywoman. Maria Valtorta knew this and was interested in these cases, for which she had inspired directions as we read in her writings. The religious woman developed a sincere friendship with her, while the other, whose behavior was questionable, remained distant.

Both then started to deviate, involving Father Migliorini, who did not realize he should have distanced himself from the two women since they were no longer in accord with the writings of the "spokesperson" of Viareggio.

The matter went beyond the private sphere and forced the ecclesiastical authority to intervene.

In March 1946, Father Migliorini was transferred to Rome and recalled to discipline by his religious order.

For four years, he had been the “affection, help, peace, and support” of Maria Valtorta, as she herself wrote in a letter full of gratitude for all she had received from him and marked by regret for the separation. She even described him as “the forerunner” who prepared the way for the revelation of the Writings.

Their relationship did not cease, and Father Migliorini continued to receive Maria Valtorta's manuscripts in Rome and to transcribe them. However, their correspondence slowed down due to new misunderstandings and eventually stopped.

Father Migliorini died on July 10, 1953 in Carsoli (L’Aquila) at the summer residence of students of his order. He was born in Volegno di Stazzema (Lucca) on June 21, 1884.

Father Berti becomes promoter of the Work

In Rome, the old tested Servite he had become found understanding and availability in his young confrere Father Berti, who was as enterprising and tenacious as he was prudent and cautious in action.

The typed booklets by Father Migliorini served Father Berti to make the Work of Maria Valtorta known to the most influential people in the Catholic world, both ecclesiastical and lay. Even Pope Pius XII had these in hand, read them — at least partially — and granted an audience to three Servites: Fathers Migliorini, Berti, and their prior. On this occasion, he gave assent to the Work and suggested publishing it with the required prudence. During this audience, as Father Berti spoke eloquently and easily, it was he who spoke instead of Father Migliorini, who was rendered speechless by emotion. This was on February 26, 1948.

In 1949, the Holy Office halted all initiatives by Father Berti toward publishing the Work. It was then that he learned that Father Migliorini had had to and did keep secret an ecclesiastical sanction against him personally, which could explain the irritated reaction of the Holy Office to the “tripwire” the pontifical audience represented.

Father Berti, having obtained this audience, was busy exploiting its fruits by seeking a publisher willing to print the Work recommended by the Pope himself. But summoned by the Holy Office, he had to agree to a series of renunciations, including the obligation to withdraw from circulation the typed copy booklets and to submit them, along with the original manuscript of the Work.

He was obviously shaken but did not lose courage. The most he could do to remain obedient was to return to the Holy Office with the typed booklets he managed to gather, apologizing for only finding a small number. As for the original manuscript notebooks of the Work, he declared not to have them, neglecting to specify that he took the night train to Viareggio, in street clothes, to return them to their rightful owner.

From her sickbed, Maria Valtorta closely followed these steps with painful apprehension.

She anxiously awaited letters from Rome and responded promptly, or she listened to what Father Berti told her during his brief visits.

Distant relations with Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta did not have great trust in Father Berti, who, on his part, did not depict her as a very agreeable person. He criticized her because she found fault with the steps taken for the Work, because she stubbornly wanted ecclesiastical approval, because she greeted him by shaking his hand “like a shovel” when he visited her in Viareggio. It does not seem to me that they quarreled, but they were in deep disagreement.

Without doubt, Father Berti had found in the Work a treasure, but he did not admire the writer to the same extent. I always thought that this came from a certain inability to understand that the Work came to us from Heaven thanks to the full offering of Maria Valtorta, whose moral sufferings due to prohibitions and misunderstandings were more piercing than her physical sufferings, which were considerable. In my view, the Church's refusal, recurrent from then on, must have presented itself to his sensibility not as an obstacle to be overcome by a remedy but as a sacrilege before which his soul, entirely given to love and self-giving, trembled and bled.

It seems to me that Father Berti, who was never Maria Valtorta's spiritual director, based his piety solely on the physical state of the writer, whose various illnesses he cataloged and pitied as “crucified in bed.” In this regard, he never failed to provide assistance through his ministry. Just as he devoted himself to patients in a Roman hospital, he was always ready to meet both the material and spiritual needs of Maria Valtorta as a sick person. He even found a stratagem (worthy of the catacomb times) for her to have the comfort of the Eucharist every day when it was vigorously denied to her.

The misunderstandings that Father Berti harbored toward Maria Valtorta despite his precautions must have influenced Father Migliorini, who combined them with his own discordances, and this favored his definitive detachment from the infirm writer of Viareggio.

Father Berti negotiates the publication of the Work

After the decision of the Holy Office in 1949, known in Valtorta history as the “blocking of the Work,” all attempts, no matter how authorized, to have a new meeting with the Pope failed. So, it was necessary to be satisfied with the certificates of personalities.

Father Berti collected them, among other things, to convince Maria Valtorta, who refused to publish the Work without certain ecclesiastical approval. Since it became impossible to obtain the imprimatur of a bishop — the only form provided for a religious-themed book to be printed with the official permission of the Church — he argued that favorable certificates from these authoritative and doctrinal personalities could be equivalent to an imprimatur, if not even beyond it.

Ultimately, Maria Valtorta was persuaded. A publisher was found: my father. The writer and the publisher made a courageous contract, formalized it, and became solely responsible for the publication. Obliged to obey the Holy Office, Father Berti remained apparently external and not concerned. But the publisher consulted him on absolutely everything.

First encounters with the young Pisani

My father, Michele Pisani, owned a printing business in Isola del Liri, in the province of Frosinone, Lazio.

The company had been founded at the beginning of the 20th century by his step-brother Arturo Macioce. After the second World War, he retired due to old age, and the company was dissolved. My father, fifteen years younger, took over the business, renamed it “M. Pisani Printing,” and continued to manage the daily work: printing books offered by clients from the Roman Catholic sphere: the curia offices, religious orders, pontifical publishers, Catholic associations… It was in these circles that he was known and respected.

Father Berti said that it was Father Roschini (famous mariologist and also a Servite of Mary) who introduced him to Isola del Liri. My father himself said that he participated, in Rome, in a meeting of certain persons who tried to build a publishing house for the publication of Maria Valtorta’s Work, which they would have wished to entrust him with printing. But he understood they could not accomplish their project and offered himself as printer and also as publisher. This explains why Father Berti used to say that my father had been inspired. The fact is that Michele Pisani went to Viareggio several times to meet Maria Valtorta and to sign a publishing contract dated October 6, 1952.

He made a move of such significance that it fulfilled his personal mission, and it was left to me (then only a high school student but destined for printing) to take care of the publication. The transition was spontaneous, I would even say natural, but it was allowed by a fact known only to me. Here's how it happened.

My father could not help mentioning Maria Valtorta from time to time, either because he understood the greatness of her work or because he was won over by her personality when he went to meet her.

One day, at the table, I heard again about the “demoiselle”; without a word, I got up and went to the living room adjoining the dining room and opened the display case where my father had placed the typed booklets of the Work. I took one, opened it at random, saw a page (I saw it more than I read it), and I understood.

More than a discovery, it was like the awakening of a dormant knowledge, exactly like when you meet an unknown person but feel you have seen them before. What I felt before this typed page still revives in me the memory of a moment of grace experienced in my adolescence in 1944. I described it as best as I could in my book Letter to Claudia, in the chapter The Other Encounter. In short, my destiny was sealed.

The time had come to meet Father Berti, if I had never met him before.

I say this because we have two memories of our first encounter far apart in time.

He said he noticed me in the printing shop in Isola while I was still a teenager and watched me at length as if he had a premonition.

It was probably when he came to meet us at Father Roschini's instigation; he also went to Sora to see Bishop Fontevecchia, because as bishop of the publisher's (or only printer's) diocese he would have had the right to grant the imprimatur. But I have no memory of this circumstance.

On the other hand, I vividly remember the first visit I made to him at the College where he resided (and where he taught, since the College and the seat of the “Marianum” were one and the same). The doorman announced me by my family name on the internal phone; he came down immediately. I still hear the quick ticking of his sandals on the stairs. On seeing me, he stopped surprised because he expected to see my father.

Our meetings would repeat almost weekly for years. And not always at the College because the time of secrecy eventually came.

The first publication of the Work

At first, Father Berti seemed quite calm to me. He acted as if the “blocking” imposed by the Holy Office did not trouble him. He later told me he had warned my father every time Father Migliorini (whom I had not known in time) had asked him to stop everything, but the “knight” Pisani always replied: “This prohibition concerns you, the religious, but not me who am a layman.”

I had no such apprehensions either. I knew the certificates left by illustrious personalities and that the Pope himself was in favor of the Work. The typesetting work advanced without fear; it was long and costly, so our concerns were of a different nature.

At the printing shop, no one was aware of the size of the Work: the typed booklets had not been handed to us all at once but were given in small batches as the composition progressed on the linotype. That is why we thought to publish the Work in three volumes, which became four. But they were still too big and ungainly.

All our work contacts were with Father Berti: on our side, it was tacitly accepted that he could act in Maria Valtorta's name, with whom we had from time to time an exchange of polite letters.

I must say, in this regard, that I had not thought for a moment to meet the “demoiselle,” for I had the same view of her as she herself expressed in the Writings: the instrument, the Lord's pen, nothing more. This idea seized me the moment I discovered the Work. Moreover, as I mentioned, Father Berti spoke of Maria Valtorta in a way that hardly made her sympathetic. Only years later, on reading the Autobiography, did I discover the rich personality of the writer and understand that her annihilation in the Lord was not the natural path of a pious woman but a heroic conquest of her soul.

Many factors led us to consider Father Berti not as a mere intermediary but as a fully delegated representative. And it was a pleasure to collaborate with him: intelligent, cultured, ready to face all situations and confront anyone with the greatest ease.

He was not cut out to be a manager, on the contrary. He insisted on denying any practical sense for fear it might harm his priestly function. For example, it was impossible to persuade him with arguments based on calculations and percentages. Yet, with his way of acting, both shrewd and naive, he managed to get more than a real businessman would have.

Despite some reservations, I admit I owe him much.

He inspired me by his example as a faithful priest and tireless worker: he never missed his ministerial duties and took no holidays.

He clearly conveyed doctrines and life rules: his explanations were schematic and striking, perhaps from his teaching habit. Likewise, his homilies were clear lessons.

He taught me the importance of order and method, at least as a principle, since in practice he sometimes seemed to follow order out of obsession and apply method tendentiously.

He gave me proofs of his friendship, rushing to sad events like the unexpected death of my father and joining joyful ones such as my marriage with Claudia.

He better introduced me to ecclesiastical circles I already frequented professionally and had always attracted me. He made me known to illustrious figures.

He gave me a list with their addresses in Rome when the first large volume of the Work appeared in the summer of 1956. With this “brick” in hand, I went knocking on their doors to announce that the Work, for which they had shown admiration, was finally printed: they would help me disseminate it. I remember with emotion the reception I got from some of them and kept in contact with them: the consistory lawyer Camillo Corsànego, Archbishop Alfonso Carinci, medical scientist Nicola Pende, mineralogist Vittorio Tredici.

The following volumes appeared in the ensuing years. The fourth and last in 1959. Pius XII had died the previous year, and John XXIII was elected, the pope who would inaugurate the era of tolerance and dialogue... by approving a condemnation.

The Indexing

On the evening of the Epiphany vigil, 1960, I went to a small party among students (I was about to turn 25) and returned late.

The next morning, I was informed that Father Berti had called me on the phone and that I had to join him immediately. I did. He asked me if I suffered from heart problems. I reassured him, but it seemed strange that such a question would be asked of a 25-year-old. Then he broke the news: the Work was placed on the Index...

I relayed this tactfully to my father.

Early in the afternoon, without saying a word, he wanted to accompany me to the bus stop for Rome, where I was to meet Father Berti at the San Gallicano hospital. It was our first clandestine meeting. Just as I was about to board the bus, my father said: “Tell Father Berti that we will continue.”

I found him seated in meditation on a bench in the hospital chapel, deserted and plunged into the darkness of a winter evening. We went to the tiny sacristy to talk. He was distressed. I spared him from giving me all the details because, upon arrival in Rome, I had bought L’Osservatore Romano and had already read the decree on the front page as well as the article detailing the reasons for the condemnation.

Father Berti regarded the situation as extremely serious. I felt he physically bore the weight of it. Yet he was already thinking about what to do, about representing the Work in a renewed edition (we already had the project), and especially about establishing a strategy of secret meetings and code words, as if evading an imminent burning at the stake. His face brightened when I conveyed my father’s message.

I understood that he had already rushed to Viareggio the previous night; but when, much later, I reconstructed the facts with Marta Diciotti, it seemed he planned to go quickly to comfort Marta more than Maria. The latter had for years been in a mysterious—or rather atypical—state of unconsciousness or incommunicability. I asked for news of the “demoiselle.”

His answer surprised and impressed me: tilting his head, he mimed closed eyes and a hanging tongue.

Soon after, I went for the first time to Viareggio, naturally with Father Berti, to accompany someone of whom I will speak later. I expected to see in Maria Valtorta a ruin. Instead, I saw a mature woman seated in a white bed, serene expression and lively eyes. She looked so normal and intelligent that I almost felt annoyed at not being able to hold a conversation with her: she simply repeated the last words we said or turned to the wall beside the bed as if distracted, but remained good and calm like a well-behaved child. The only oddity, especially when alone, was small prolonged cries, like a siren sound that stopped, followed by the exclamation: “What sunshine there is here!”

Thinking back to Father Berti’s description of Maria Valtorta’s state, I considered he might have been influenced by a serious event or an unforeseen emotion. Besides, he admitted once he sometimes mistook imagined representations for reality. From then on, I began to distrust his accounts. But I must admit I never found falsehood in his words or writings; rather, he tended to present facts truthfully but from a suggestive angle, allowing interpretation in the desired sense.

Preparation of the second edition

Father Berti gave me a great proof of trust when he allowed me to gather the printed text of the Work (in the four large and ungainly volumes printed from a typed copy) along with Maria Valtorta’s handwritten notebooks for a new edition to be published in ten volumes. The movements of delivery and return of these precious documents were noted each time in a notebook. Extreme care was always taken in handling the handwritten notebooks, both by me and by him. They stayed in Viareggio, in the wardrobe facing Maria’s bed in her room.

If collecting them was my exclusive responsibility to the point that I became the sole expert, there was another task Father Berti and I had to do together. It was to examine all autograph annotations made by Maria Valtorta on one of the typed copies of the Work, to select those which, according to a predetermined criterion, should enter the critical apparatus of the new edition.

For a long time, we spent Sundays on this task, refuging in the old San Gallicano hospital at the heart of Trastevere.

Father Berti went there every Saturday for years to hear the confessions of the sick and was a great help to the chaplain, a former Capuchin friar.

He knew many doctors and nurses, and he had his small court of faithful patients, mainly women disfigured by lupus and children with scabies. He considered this place, a dermatological hospital, very suitable to keep away curious ecclesiastical ranks.

Everyone loved him there. They called him “Father Alberto” after someone once mistakenly used a first name for his surname. That is why he could remain incognito. The chaplain was happy to give him a small room where he could work with me and, at lunch, invited us to his table with some doctors.

For brief communications, like handing over drafts or others (usual meetings I included in the round of Roman printing clients I made weekly), we met briefly in front of the monumental fountain of the Janiculum, which in our code we simply called “the water.” It was a few steps from his college, but he wanted to avoid it: Father Berti did not want his order to appear implicated in any way in Valtorta affairs. He wanted to personally take the risks.

There were also work vacations… In summer, especially after Maria Valtorta’s death, Marta hosted us in the Viareggio house for a week or more; Father Berti, lover of the sea, wanted to work on the beach.

Personally, I would have preferred to work indoors for comfort and maybe take a dip after mid-morning for a bit of relaxation. Nothing doing. In the morning, after celebrating Mass in Maria’s room, he transformed into a vacationer and went out with me, equipped with all necessary materials. On the beach, we must have looked truly strange to those seeing us leafing through these booklets sitting on the sand!

Father Berti could not conceive of a vacation without work. He even worked while traveling, by train or car — since he did not drive. He said time never comes back, so it must not be wasted.

Mealtime was the only time he rested.

As he decided not to work during meals, he asked for chicken bones, and if there was chicken on the menu, he preferred fasting rather than having to debone it. That was another of his oddities.

Father Berti misleads himself while thinking he does good

The indexing had not stopped the diffusion of the Work: after a pause, it resumed slowly but irresistibly, as always.

Moreover, Father Berti’s great fear had not come true: a negative reaction from the printing house’s clients, who were exclusively religious. On the contrary, some were worried about us and asked if we had suffered economic harm. Better: printing orders, which had dipped and worried us, bounced back unexpectedly. This sign from Heaven gave us strength and hope.

A new edition of the Work was already planned to remedy the imperfections of the first.

After the condemnation, Father Berti imagined justifying it by presenting the Work as a particular phenomenon to be submitted to scientists to avoid the reedition appearing as a challenge to the Holy Office. This explains the comparison with original manuscripts and critical apparatus that included, not only Maria Valtorta’s own annotations incorporated in the typed texts but also doctrinal notes and biblical references prepared by Father Berti and textual critical notes written by me.

Now that Maria Valtorta was seemingly out of the world, we thought we could add her name, omitted in the first edition because she refused to be known in her lifetime.

But to qualify the edition as "scientific," we needed the approval of a scholar from the secular cultural sphere. So Father Berti took a risky initiative, which Maria Valtorta would certainly have refused if she had been aware. Through Nicola Pende — a renowned physician who held the Work in high esteem — he contacted the Italian Society of Parapsychology and managed to interest its secretary-general, Luciano Rafaele, in Maria Valtorta’s writings. The latter even promised to write a monograph.

It was necessary to accompany him to Viareggio to meet Maria Valtorta, and that was when I went there for the first time with Father Berti. I entered last into the ground-floor room, standing behind Father Berti and Luciano Rafaele. I already reported above how I saw Maria, as withdrawn inside herself, and the impression she left on me.

We stayed a few days in Viareggio, at the Valtorta house. As we said goodbye, before leaving, Maria Valtorta ordered Luciano Rafaele: “Go away! Go away!” We paid little attention to the incident considering the patient’s health. But later, we sought justification because Father Berti and Marta recalled other occasions where Maria withdrew within herself, showing she did not speak indiscriminately.

One day, Father Berti challenged her with a trap question; after staring at him a moment, she said: “How stupid you are!”

This happened to Marta who heard on the radio that the Work had been placed on the Index. Shaken, she ran to Maria Valtorta and embraced her crying: “Did you see what they did to you?” or something similar. But Maria looked at Marta and answered: “I knew it” before immediately resuming her distracted expression.

In Doctor Rafaele's case, it was not hard to find an explanation when it was learned that for study reasons — he said — he took part in some séances. Maria Valtorta’s visceral repulsion for such practices was well known. Her autobiographical writings report notable episodes. For my part, I think she expressed her disapproval of this sort of pact between paranormal science and the Lord’s Work.

The first of the ten volumes of the new edition was prefaced by Luciano Rafaele with his qualifications well highlighted. The volume (the first only) came out the year of Maria Valtorta’s death, but it had been preceded by a 300-copy special print that allowed Doctor Rafaele to present it at a Parapsychology Symposium in Rome in November 1960.

It found no echo. Even the volume’s preface produced no effect, neither good nor bad, and I thought best to remove it from subsequent reprints. The long-awaited monograph never arrived, and relations between Father Berti and Rafaele, begun in perfect agreement, deteriorated to the point of disputes.

Doctor Rafaele, who had consulted letters and collected testimonies, knew that Maria Valtorta expressed some distrust toward Father Berti. That is why, one day hearing him tell — with nervousness without doubt — how their first meeting went in Viareggio, he sharply replied: “When Maria Valtorta no longer understood, she said to me, ‘Go away!’ but she was in full mind when she told you, my Father, that you were a liar!”

I honor Father Berti for telling me himself this episode, with on his face the pathetic expression of a man who took a beating and knew he deserved it. In other words: with humility.

The death of Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta passed away on Thursday, October 12, 1961, at 10:35 am. It was not Father Berti at her bedside but one of his confreres, Father Innocenzo M. Rovetti. For years, he would recount his astonishment at seeing the dying woman’s prompt obedience: barely had he spoken the ritual words: “Depart from this world, Christian soul...” when she expired.

Father Berti closely followed the last deteriorations of her health and was in Viareggio, if I recall correctly, barely 24 hours before her death. Naturally, he returned immediately and stayed until the funeral, held on Saturday the 14th, early to respect a wish she had expressed earlier.

When he was in Viareggio, Father Berti always stayed in the Valtorta house, unaware that their order had a convent regularly inhabited by a community of brothers in the city, and he avoided churches. He ate, slept, and celebrated the Eucharist in that house.

Permission to celebrate in Maria Valtorta’s room was due to her being a disabled member of the Archconfraternity of Mercy. Archbishop Mgr Carinci, secretary of the Congregation of Rites and very attached to liturgical rules, had himself celebrated in that room during a visit to Maria Valtorta, whom he considered saintly.

To be honest, if it had not been authorized, Father Berti gave himself permission, so he continued celebrating Mass in Maria’s room after her death. In all priestly ministry, he saw himself as a Missionary who could prioritize necessity over all severe canonical norms. He viewed his service to the Work, mysteriously opposed by the Church while providing great spiritual benefit, as a Mission. Also persecuted, he tended to exaggerate this aspect: he saw the eyes of the Holy Office spying everywhere, even in the room opposite the Valtorta house, a driving school (now converted to a residence).

At the sad occasion of Maria Valtorta’s death, he barricaded himself in the house and left only to return to Rome after the funeral. He neither went to church nor cemetery and stayed upstairs without showing himself when priests with the hearse and the Mercy confreres arrived. He said it was safer or better thus so no one could say later he had acted imprudently.

The concern for posterity’s judgment accompanied him at every moment. I think such egocentric attention can weaken the objectivity of his written reports, which he called “historical letters.” He periodically sent them to Maria Valtorta and later to Marta Diciotti.

Maria Valtorta’s death caused some stirring in the house; notebook in hand, he took note of everything. Given the discreet influx of visitors, almost all known, he was able to make a nearly complete list. There were also unexpected visitors or important persons. For example, journalists came and asked questions, then published nonsense. Luciano Rafaele arrived with a Judean camera operator who did a few shots. But a dramatic moment occurred.

Admiring the peaceful face of death, a visitor suggested a mold. Father Berti enthusiastically homilized it. I forgot how they called two artists from Viareggio.

They came, agreed, left, and returned at night with the necessary materials. Father Berti and I stayed in the locked room with the two men, while Marta watched with a few friends in the adjoining dining room.

The preparation was meticulous, and they finally spread a white, soft plaster over Maria Valtorta’s face, covering it completely. Waiting for it to set for the next phases, Father Berti explained to the two workers, completely ignorant, the personality and work of Maria Valtorta. They were amazed; the elder, unable to find another way to express his astonishment, kept exclaiming: “Good heavens!”

There was lively apprehension when detaching the now hardened substance from the face: it did not come off. The two men were worried about not having applied enough moisturizing cream before the plaster. Father Berti began to imagine Marta’s despair if she saw her Maria disfigured!

Eventually, thanks to God, the plaster came off, revealing Maria Valtorta’s intact face.

Nothing remained but to clean it.

It was a good job. I personally brought it to Rome to sculptor Lorenzo Ferri, who used it to make a wax death mask. It is now displayed in a glass case in Maria Valtorta’s room.

The legacy of Maria Valtorta

The decision by the General Council of the Servite Order not to accept Maria Valtorta’s heritage must have been a hard blow for Father Berti. To understand this, one must know the background and consequences.

As I said at the beginning of these “memoirs,” Maria Valtorta had as spiritual director a religious of the Servite Order, Father Romualdo M. Migliorini. Unconsciously, he introduced her to literary activity by asking her to write her life story. After some hesitation, she agreed and put on paper, with great talent, a flow of memories and feelings that make up the Autobiography she offered to Father Migliorini, and later to us.

It was like a decisive catharsis. Free from the last drags of her humanity, Maria Valtorta became the “pen of the Lord.” When she received the first dictation on that memorable Good Friday of 1943, she confided to Marta and immediately sent her to Father Migliorini. Upon arrival, he reassured her about the origin of the message and invited her to continue writing what she would still receive. He himself followed day after day Maria Valtorta’s prodigious production and typed copies of her handwritten notebooks until… he was transferred to Rome, where he found Father Berti and started collaborating with him, as we saw.

The partnership between Maria Valtorta and Migliorini was, in Father Berti’s eyes, an indissoluble link between the Valtortian Work and the Servite Order. Moreover, she had joined the order as a tertiary and already belonged, by vocation, to the Franciscan third order.

Father Berti was much attached to his religious family, which he felt bound to as to the sacramental character of priesthood; he even wished to be bishop to have the fullness of priesthood… and perhaps also to grant imprimatur to the Work. Even if he found no support or even passive understanding in his order, he faced difficulties and risks with the dual aim of serving the Work and benefiting the order, from which he had received no mandate. And his subjectivism led him to illusions… For example, if a Servite priest went to Maria Valtorta for a priestly act or participated personally in a Valtorta event in the years following her death, he hurried to note that this priest had “represented” the Servite order on that occasion. If a confrere, perhaps more charitable, showed special willingness to help him, he would recommend him as his “successor” in the Valtorta engagement.

In the last years of his life, when illness weakened his intellectual vigor, Father Berti kept increasing the number of collaborators; he recruited even theology students and formed a somewhat illusory team. After his death and in the following years, none of his “assistants” claimed a role or showed any interest in Maria Valtorta’s Work.

But let us return to the starting point of this chapter.

From 1947 — the year after Father Migliorini’s transfer from Viareggio to Rome — Maria Valtorta had stipulated that her writings be entrusted to the Servite Order. I do not know how she obtained the formal commitment from the order's general prior, Father Alfonso M. Benedetti, to publish the Work “with an imprimatur.” Instead, in 1949 occurred the famous “blocking” by the Holy Office, mainly due to Maria Valtorta and partly through the negligence of superiors and the incapacity of Fathers Berti and Migliorini.

She thus made her will in the presence of Marta Diciotti, whom she had always trusted and deeply thanked. The situation remained so until, starting in 1956, she gradually sank into a state of apathy and abandonment. It was then that Father Berti forced the situation.

I must explain that Maria Valtorta, despite her mysterious state of incommunicability with the outside world, was certainly no longer writing but was capable of doing so if pressed. More precisely: there was a first period when, on her own, she filled sheets of paper and holy images with the short prayer: “Jesus, I trust in You.” She wrote it countless times and counted the indulgences earned (although she was not very skilled with numbers or math!).

But later she became completely inactive, while still retaining the ability to sign and write under dictation. I remember Luciano Rafaele, in my presence and with Father Berti, wanted to test this: he put a notebook and pen in her hand, and she obediently wrote what he asked. Her writings from this period are easily recognized by frequent and arbitrary capitalization at word beginnings.

Back to the will episode: In 1957, Father Berti, to whom Marta Diciotti did not object out of deference, brought a notary to Maria Valtorta. In his presence, she wrote a will leaving everything to the Servite Order. But the notary noticed some mental anomaly in the testatrix and warned Marta that the act might be invalidated. In a sense, this was later done by the General Council's decision not to accept the Valtorta writings heritage, which thus reverted to Marta Diciotti as stipulated by a clause of the will in case of such refusal.

Nevertheless, the General Council did not exclude a reexamination should Marta, in turn, make a will leaving Maria Valtorta's writings to the Servite Order. Father Berti quickly arranged it so Marta made her will at San Colombano (Lucca), at the Discalced Carmelite convent where Mother Superior Teresa Maria of Saint Joseph was Maria Valtorta’s “spiritual mother” and remains a reference for us all. The Mother Superior and Father Berti signed the document as witnesses.

This story might seem unbelievable but it is not. Father Berti never aspired to any remuneration for his Valtorta work. Poor and uninterested, he only asked for help if someone was in need.

He acted, rightly or wrongly, out of attachment to the order to which he belonged and the Work he believed in. He wanted to secure the Work’s Future and hoped the order would have the pride of glorifying, the task of overseeing its dissemination and promotion of study, and finally the privilege of keeping the originals. He acted honestly for this goal but must have understood he might have put the Work in a dead end.

During a hospital stay for one of his heart attacks — real or presumed — he received a visit from Marta Diciotti, to whom he asked kindly to add a codicil to his will. Marta did not content herself with the oral phrase: she gave him a piece of paper on which he wrote in red ink, in his unmistakable broad and round capitals handwriting, the following words:

“In the event that the Servite Order, through the General Father and his council or a Provincial Father and his council, could not or would not accept and disseminate (with publication and publicity) the Writings of Maria Valtorta, both published and unpublished, as well as the related documentation, I hereby leave in my will all the aforementioned writings with related documentation and accompanying obligations to Dr. Emilio Pisani (of Isola del Liri, son of the late Michele) and his legal heirs.”

When she returned home, Marta added at the bottom of the page in her tiny handwriting: “Written by Reverend Father Berti, O.S.M., at San Camillo hospital, Rome, November 11, 1970.” And she kept the sheet.

The exhumation of the body

In 1971, Father Berti was well enough to organize with great caution the exhumation of Maria Valtorta's body, buried in the Cemetery of Mercy in Viareggio.

A burial regulation stipulated that such an operation was possible only ten years after burial, but the deadline was not absolute. Still, Father Berti insisted on adhering to it and fixed the exhumation date to October 12, 1971, the tenth anniversary of Maria Valtorta’s death.

There was a half-declared reason: he was waiting for a miraculous sign and even desired it. I personally think he needed it to feel recognized after much hidden work, many suffered oppositions, and many misunderstood anxieties. He perhaps hoped for it deep in his heart.

He began early to devise plans, make agreements, and organize meetings. He did not neglect to prepare for what would be done if the body were intact. But he would have been content with much less: to find only the right hand uncorrupted, the hand that wrote, which after Maria Valtorta’s death and during the body’s exposure, remained vividly colored unlike the left, which became livid.

After rejecting our proposal to conduct the exhumation privately, Father Berti managed to publicize it and give it a solemn character, no longer fearing personal exposure.

He requested and obtained from Rome the participation of the order’s postulator and called guests so that a small assembly of pious readers of the Work came to Viareggio. On the vigil evening, nine priests concelebrated in the basilica of S. Andrea, officiated by the Servites.

On the morning of the 12th, at the Cemetery of Mercy adjacent to the municipal cemetery, everything proceeded peacefully in an atmosphere of recollection.

The postulator kept the public at distance from the exhumation spot with severity that seemed excessive.

The prayerful assembly did not notice some setbacks my wife and I had to remedy by often leaving and rushing by car to Pisa. This mostly involved providing necessary items to the postulator, an expert in how to treat mortal remains of God’s servants for preservation. He had come from Rome only for this task but brought nothing. Father Berti, who had drawn a meticulous but useless list, could not foresee that formaldehyde or bandages, etc. would be needed.

The work extended into the afternoon and was carried out carefully in an appropriate place at the cemetery. The purpose of the gathering was achieved early in the morning when Father Berti climbed on the little cornice where the tombs were and announced, arms outstretched in a liturgical gesture: “Bones, only bones.” It appears even the right hand bones no longer existed.

This annihilation was Maria Valtorta’s sign. I felt she meant once again: “Do not appeal to me but to the Lord.”

Father Roschini and the transfer of remains to the Santissima Annunziata in Florence

On the Valtorta scene, Father Berti’s twilight began with Father Roschini’s dawn.

The illustrious mariologist Gabriele M. Roschini wanted to read Maria Valtorta’s entire Work and was dazzled by it. He made amends for his past mistrust—or indifference—and decided to crown with Maria Valtorta a course on “Marian intuitions of great mystics” to be given at the “Marianum” in the coming academic year. All this took place during summer 1972.

In truth, Father Roschini had been interested in Maria Valtorta’s Work since 1946, when he examined part of it at the request of the order’s general prior. He gave a measured and partly favorable opinion.

Following this, he had visited the writer in Viareggio and wrote to her respectfully. When the Work was indexed in December 1959, he was a member of the Holy Office, but it is unclear to what extent he was involved in that decision.

He asked me for news whenever he saw me at the “Marianum” and always rejoiced at the good dissemination of the Work. But he only took an indirect interest, perhaps hoping for an event that would be a revelation for him.

This is precisely what his decision to read the entire Work produced.

His “conversion” greatly pleased Father Berti; as Father Roschini’s determination passed from words to acts, Berti felt overtaken by a confrere who was an authority in the Servite Order. This withdrawal attitude reminded me of an actor who, having played leading roles on stage, is forced to sit among the audience to follow the recitations of a beginner whose talent exceeds his.

It is no coincidence I make this comparison: Father Berti tended to “recite his life,” to borrow the expression used by Father Bernardo M. Antonini at a commemoration held at the “Marianum” two years after his death. Indeed, there was always a bit of naïve theatrics in his behavior, with a preference for the role of the sick or the victim. Faced with Father Roschini's engagement, he played the humiliated, the mortified, without explaining his sulky silence.

He refused to come to Viareggio on July 2, 1973, when after obtaining permission to privately transfer Maria Valtorta’s mortal remains to Florence, he was forced to abandon his project — which we immediately regarded as unfeasible — in favor of a solemn public event.

That morning, in the presence of a few close friends and Father Roschini, the urn was removed from the family tomb in the Viareggio cemetery where it had been placed after exhumation two years earlier and was placed in the back seat of my car, between Marta and Claudia. I was driving, Father Roschini next to me. We deliberately went through Viareggio center and made a short stop before “her” house, then headed to Florence.

Father Berti waited in the monumental cloister of the basilica S. Annunziata with some confreres of the Florence community.

Serious and contrite, he concelebrated without gesture or words about this important event, which Father Roschini, who presided at the Eucharistic celebration, illustrated with a magnificent homily.

He behaved similarly on December 8 of the same year, again in Florence, when Father Roschini and I presented the book The Virgin Mary in the Writings of Maria Valtorta in the basilica’s spacious three-centenary refectory, packed. He stayed at the back of the room with the air of a casual spectator. To emphasize his self-imposed isolation, he had drawn over his head the Servite habit’s hood.

Yet Father Roschini certainly did not aspire to supplant Father Berti, who, by the way, survived him.

Suffering from cancer, good Father Roschini died on September 12, 1977. It is true he was eleven years older than Father Berti — born in 1900 — but his vitality until months before death seemed to promise great longevity.

Cardinal Ottaviani and Father Berti at Father Roschini’s funeral

Father Roschini had been a consultor of the Holy Office — now renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His funeral offered me a representation of the epochal change that had occurred in the Church’s life.

The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office (“supreme” because superior to bishops and subordinate only to the Pope) had the delicate task of safeguarding the integrity of faith and morals.

Unlike other Congregations, each presided over by a cardinal, called “prefect” assisted by a “secretary,” the rule was that this congregation’s prefect was not a cardinal but the Pope himself. Hence, the cardinal who effectively presided was titled “secretary.” Later, when the Congregation changed name and methods, the title of cardinal “prefect” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith appeared.

This reform was troubled, due to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani’s personality; he led the Holy Office first as “secretary” then as “pro-prefect,” with such firmness as to earn the nickname “Church policeman.” Anchored to tradition (his heraldic motto was semper idem, always the same), Ottaviani endured the phases of reform painfully, eventually resigning into Pope Paul VI’s hands, showing disagreement contrasting with his image as champion of obedience.

Even before becoming cardinal, Ottaviani was already authoritative at the Holy Office when the Work was “blocked” in 1949, and was cardinal secretary (practically its head) when it was indexed in 1959.

Through the whole history of Maria Valtorta’s Work, the names Ottaviani and the Holy Office identified together, forming a kind of monster; Father Berti constantly tried to shield himself from it like a mouse from a cat. He feared summons to the austere palace of the Holy Office so much that a December 1961 summons — in an atmosphere far different from 1949 — caused stomach pains.

I once heard Ottaviani could be a kind man and sometimes strolled the alleys of Trastevere where he was born.

Yet the idea formed through Father Berti’s fears made a request for an audience unthinkable.

However! The one Father Berti had feared for twenty years without ever confronting him except by proxy attended Father Roschini’s funeral, sitting opposite him, now harmless, also a victim of events.

The coffin rested in the transept center of the San Marcello Church. There was no sign recalling Father Roschini as scholar and authority, only his religious habit and priestly stole. On both sides, parallel to the coffin, rows of chairs and benches were set for intimates and notables. Father Berti sat on the right side, Cardinal Ottaviani on the left, facing each other.

The entrance of the celebrants, expected from the general headquarters of the Servites on the adjacent square entering through the back of the church, was awaited in sadness and recollection. The gaze of the aged blind cardinal searched the empty space for his friend’s coffin to surely recall moments known only to himself. Opposite, Father Berti, unaware, fixed his eyes on the coffin, seemingly reminding himself that earthly glories pass away. Two equally tired looks destined to meet around the mystery of death...

The new prefect of the reformed Congregation, the Slavic Cardinal Franjo Seper, Ottaviani’s first successor was also inside. But the two men did not seem together; they seemed to avoid each other.

At ceremony’s end, as the attendees began to leave, Cardinal Ottaviani approached with a lay escort and traced a blessing sign at the coffin’s foot. Then I saw him depart with a heavy step, dependent on his guide, toward the church door opening onto a clear Roman morning.

I later found myself at the College with Father Berti. Neither of us made mention of the feared cardinal’s presence at Father Roschini’s funeral. It symbolically closed a period of our history after having definitively ended his own.

Father Berti had always declared he did not want an overwhelming victory, only to win.

Maybe that was what he thought while we conversed peacefully…

The “remorse” of the Holy Office

The edition of the Work in ten volumes — we preferred to say “new” rather than “second” — was completed in 1967 with the publication of volume 10.

When the first of the ten volumes appeared in 1961, L’Osservatore Romano published a note recalling the Work’s indexing. Father Berti was summoned to the Holy Office one last time, but was simply told: “We shall see how the world welcomes it,” in an open spirit.

It was during the fifteen years of Paul VI’s pontificate (1963-1978) that the Work enjoyed its most peaceful period. Later, when translations into several languages made it known worldwide, the indexing began to be recalled, reigniting controversy we thought extinct. Questioned on the Church's position, the ecclesiastical authority acknowledged the 1959 condemnation with associated documents but commented in a way to allow prudential openness.

In 1982, I met by chance Mgr Mario Crovini in Rome at the “Propaganda Mariana” bookstore. He had been a collaborator of Cardinal Ottaviani at the Holy Office. The owner of the bookstore, who knew me well, introduced me to him. In a vein of confidences, he spoke of the 1959 condemnation saying: “We immediately regretted putting Maria Valtorta’s Work on the Index.” He must have known a lot, but a slip of mine stopped him, and he said no more. I still regret it!

Father Berti multiplies his annotations

In this climate of tolerance, Father Berti... came out of the catacombs and, on the last page of volume 10 of the new edition, wanted to be known as the author of doctrinal notes.

His name already appeared prominently in some notes: he indicated having written specific publications to comment on Maria Valtorta’s text. This concerned mainly scriptural, patristic clarifications or documents from the pontifical and conciliar magisterium. But he got carried away and moved from the sobriety of the first volumes to the redundancy of the last, where he poured out a science hardly digestible by the “little ones of the troop,” the favorites of the gospel message.

One day, the secretary of his theology faculty almost reproached him for spending time on these notes and neglecting to produce publications as a professor. Father Berti replied that a theology treatise stays within a few dozens of students, while notes added to Maria Valtorta’s Work would reach readers worldwide...

Once the new edition of the main Work was finished, we mutually agreed to publish the Autobiography. Father Berti also covered it with notes and wanted to include an “introduction,” which I reluctantly accepted. It stayed for many years. It was a synthesis of Maria Valtorta’s personality and spirituality, which readers can discover by themselves reading this sincere and captivating autobiographical narrative; it was mainly a pretext to justify, without seeming to touch it, his difficult relationship with Maria Valtorta.

Father Berti again exaggerated the number of notes in minor works, and I had to restrain him. He was not used to being contradicted, so he began to stiffen and withdraw. Not being able to fully count on his real collaborator, mostly an executor, he started writing memoirs, making lists of facts and names which had populated events around Maria Valtorta, and keeping short accounts in meetings with some friends.

Despite his growing physical weakening, he was supported by some good people who frequented and assisted him, unintentionally contributing to his isolation by somewhat fanatical devotion.

The death of Father Berti

Father Berti respected the body because it was destined for resurrection. This profession of faith justified his care for his own person through the elegance of his religious habit. Fashion conscious, he managed to control his complacency knowing he had a slender and distinguished figure. When he disguised himself to avoid being recognized (one day he came to Isola del Liri dressed as a plumber!), the contrast between his clothing and appearance drew even more attention.

Toward the end, he was no longer the same. Neglected in civilian clothes, uncombed, eyes behind thick glasses, he walked the College (or rested in clinic) as if to show premature senility and disabled neglect. But he was lucid and still sharp-tongued.

One summer, he was driven to Viareggio where he spent a few days in a house of his order in the docks area. There, accompanied, he made a courtesy visit to Marta in the Valtorta house, which had been “his” house. He was increasingly detached.

One morning, early winter, I saw him again as before: he was laid on his bedroom bed, dressed in religious habit, hands joined under the scapular, emaciated, head slightly tilted. He seemed rejuvenated in the peace of the eternal sun.

A candle burned next to him. On a table was a large open book with page tops marked by frequent consultation. I recognized the Concordantiae Bibliorum Sacrorum, the concordance of sacred texts he had used to write scriptural references in Maria Valtorta’s Work.

To go further

• Father Corrado Berti and Maria Valtorta
• Fr. Berti: quotes from the work
• Fr. Berti: Rome conference (1970)
• Fr. Berti: sworn statement (1978)
• Fr. Berti: final testimony
• Discuss on the forum
• Search in the multilingual and multicriteria Index

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