François-Michel Debroise is an author and lecturer, specialist in the Catholic mystic Maria Valtorta, on whom he has published numerous works and founded the site maria-valtorta.org, dedicated to her.
He was a collaborator of Monsignor René Laurentin, with whom he worked for nearly ten years (2007-2017) and published three books together. He was involved in several initiatives to deepen the understanding of "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me" as well as other works by Maria Valtorta.
In "The Life of Mary According to the Revelations of the Mystics", published by Presses de la Renaissance, Mgr Laurentin – a world-renowned specialist of the Virgin and Apparitions – and François-Michel Debroise, conducted a comparative study of the "lives of Mary" told by eight mystics including Marie d'Agréda, Anne-Catherine Emmerich and Maria Valtorta. In this first work, Monsignor René Laurentin mentions, at several points, his collaboration with François-Michel Debroise:
"Mgr Laurentin had long been searching for a student or a confirmed professor to carry out a methodical and critical study. He met François-Michel Debroise, who had been deeply and enduringly influenced by these 'lives'[1].
"It was then that I met François-Michel Debroise: a man of value who, after various political and social commitments, regained faith. His conversion occurred through Medjugorje and through these 'revealed lives', especially Maria Valtorta. He had identified, throughout, the references and implicit quotations of the Bible by Maria Valtorta. He published them on an Internet site dedicated to the Italian seer, which was consulted more than ten thousand times per month on average in 90 different countries[2]. He compiled a dictionary of the 750 characters appearing in this life."[3]
And also:
"I was touched by the remarkable journey of François-Michel Debroise. A man who had a career in the French Left and sang 'The Internationale', fist raised, in groups campaigning for the social cause. After that, he was almost captivated by Christ, Christian values – but without losing his social sense – and he perceived as jewels with a thousand reflections, the writings of the seeresses who evoked Christ and the Virgin. But he had everything to remain sensitive to the normal challenges of criticism[4].
"A doctoral thesis would doubtlessly have been forced to restrict the research object to gain in precision and methodological unity. Good luck to those who will push the trial further, for it is a trial, even if we performed it cheerfully in our approach, deliberately economical to achieve maximum results with minimum cost and clarity of expression. François-Michel Debroise’s analytical genius accomplished the core work on the problematic realized and developed jointly[5]."
And finally:
"On his side, he wanted to found and justify the insights that these 'lives' had brought him in his human and spiritual life, in terms of his knowledge, as well as his life and culture, theoretical and practical: [we were] both with the same concern for honesty, objectivity, truth.[6].
"Curiously, their points of view on the work of Maria Valtorta were rather opposed: skeptical for Laurentin, admiring for Debroise."
"We thus shared the same open concern for verification and truth. In short, our confrontation, very open and sincerely ignorant of the conclusions that the comparative analysis would lead to, was nothing like a systematic 'pro and contra', a controversy, a fight, but a common evaluation from two different perspectives[7]."
Bibliography
2011 - The Life of Mary According to the Revelations of the Mystics - with René Laurentin
Guest of Lys Daufresne on Le Grand Témoin on Radio Notre Dame on December 13, 2016, for the 60th anniversary of the first publication in Italy of Il poema dell’Uomo-Dio (The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me)
Presentation given at the press conference of the Maria Valtorta Heritage Foundation for the release of the new translation of "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me" on March 23, 2017, in Paris. The text of this presentation was published by the Maria Valtorta association.
Interview by Guillaume de Thieulloy on TV Libertés, Terres de Mission about the release of The Strength of the Martyrs, a collection of texts by Maria Valtorta prepared with Benoît de Fleurac.
Notes and References
↑René Laurentin, François-Michel Debroise, The Life of Mary According to the Revelations of the Mystics, What Should We Think of It?, Introduction, p. 9.
