Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta

Maria Valtorta in 1943, colorized
Biography
Birth	March 14, 1897 Caserta, Campania, Italy
Death	October 12, 1961 (aged 64) Viareggio, Tuscany, Italy
Resting place	Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata, Florence
Nationality	Italian
Father	Giuseppe Valtorta
Mother	Iside Fioravanzi
Occupation	Mystic, writer
Her writings
Main work	The Gospel as Revealed to Me
Other works	Notebooks 1943, Notebooks 1944, Notebooks 1945-1950, Lessons on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, The Book of Azariah, The Little Notebooks, Autobiography

Maria Valtorta, born in Caserta on March 14, 1897, and died on October 12, 1961, in Viareggio, was an Italian Catholic mystic. She is the author of The Gospel as Revealed to Me, which recounts the life of Jesus, as well as other works presenting, in the form of dictations, teachings of Jesus, of the Virgin Mary, of the Holy Spirit, of her guardian angel, and of various saints.

She was the only daughter of Giuseppe Valtorta, a cavalry non-commissioned officer, for whom she had great and deep affection, and a French teacher, Iside Fioravanzi, a very authoritarian and ill-tempered woman who demanded exclusive attention from her daughter. She could not tolerate any suitor of her daughter and broke off Maria's engagements twice.

Maria Valtorta moved to various places in Italy, according to her father's regiment assignments. On March 17, 1920, while walking with her mother in Florence, she was attacked by "a small delinquent, son of a communist and our milliner. With an iron bar taken from the side of a bed, he came from behind and shouted: 'Down with the rich and the military!' while striking me, with all his strength, a terrible blow. After three months of immobilization, she went for two years to convalesce with her maternal family in Reggio Calabria.

In 1924, the family permanently settled in Viareggio, in Tuscany where Maria engaged in Catholic Action. In 1925, she offered herself to Merciful Love and on July 1, 1931, she offered herself to the Lord as a victim for the sins of men. Her health deteriorated progressively. From April 1, 1934, Easter Sunday, she remained bedridden permanently. She would stay there 27 years, during which she wrote all the mystical works for which she is known today.

Biography

Her mother, Iside Fioravanzi

Happy and austere childhood

A great deal of detailed information about Maria Valtorta’s life comes from her Autobiography. She was an only child. Her mother scarcely loved her: she suffered from a liver disease that made her ill-tempered and fulfilled her role as wife and mother with authoritarianism, out of duty and without affection.

Maria tenderly loved her father, a cavalry non-commissioned officer, but he was often absent and coped with his wife's authoritarian nature. Professional disappointments and health issues kept him away from his daughter's trials.

Her father, Giuseppe Valtorta

For Maria Valtorta, childhood, spent in the convent school where she was a boarder in Monza, north of Milan, was a happy period away from home. She received precious insights, though always in austere form.

At age 4, she was, together with other students, taken for the first time before a realistic statue of Jesus taken down from the cross. Many of her classmates were scared but young Maria Valtorta overflowed with affection and compassion for Jesus.

At age 8, she received Confirmation from the hands of Cardinal Andrea Ferrari, beatified by John Paul II in 1987. At the laying on of hands she felt "the transmission of the Spirit of love and a close bond with the Paraclete," from whom she now perceived "the permanent presence, assistance, and gentle comfort."

Maria Valtorta in 1907

At age 11, on the day of her solemn communion, she laid, in an act of piety, her crown of roses at the feet of the Immaculate Virgin and thereafter remained devoted to the Mother of Sorrows.  

Maria Valtorta in 1912

At age 15, she experienced her last spiritual retreat at the college before her mother withdrew her. The retreat took place in a particular fervor.

"Jesus descended into me," she wrote, "with the Father and the Spirit, each bearing their gifts to little Maria… The Father entered, offering this young soul the vision of His Majesty and Power. The Son brought with Him all the treasures of His Mercy and Wisdom. The Holy Spirit poured forth His lights and the flames of His Charity… It was truly in light that I lived those days. A light that made everything luminous to my eyes: past, present, and future. Everything was clear to me. This light made me understand, in the deepest sense of the word, what my life in God should be, what God wanted from me to conquer the kingdom of God."

Jesus said to her:

"You will be the penitent love. Your models will be those creatures who have known the sting of evil, who have bitten the dust at the hour of moral disarray, who have suffered for the creature while losing sight of the Creator, but who are reborn with a soul of repentance and love. They rise so high in spiritual life that they acquire a splendor not inferior to that of the pure by the grace of God, for they have more merit: their life was more painful, hard to conquer, beyond all measure.".

She continues:

"I then clearly understood that God called me to a life of suffering, that tears would be my companions and the cross my emblem, and that from that moment I had to, renouncing the sweet dream of martyrdom that was that of the first Christians, prepare for the obscure martyrdom of the heart, unknown to all except God. A continual martyrdom, exercised throughout life and in all circumstances. The world was to be my arena of combat. I did not know what the fight would be, but I clearly knew it had to be played in the world and not in the cloister.".

On February 23, 1913, she definitively left the college at the request of her mother: she was about to turn 16. Looking back on this period, Maria Valtorta confides:

"I did not become the little Host-Maria of Jesus by human words. It was Jesus who instructed me, who gently called me at the hours when He wanted the spiritual ear of His little Maria to be attentive to words of life. I remember the sweet storm of love aroused in me by certain particular lives of saints… The first I heard was The Story of a Soul by Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Her doctrine of confident abandonment, generous love, her little way of great holiness immediately imposed itself on me."

The first trials

After leaving the college, the Valtorta family settled in Florence near Piazza San Gallo. Her mother preached religious indifference: for her, contrary to her daughter's desire, it was useless to confess or to receive communion too often. She blocked the mystical development of Maria Valtorta: on Sundays, she could only attend very early low Masses and heard almost no sermons or Lenten conferences. She did not make any retreats other than those experienced during school. She secretly attended church and remained devoted to the First Friday devotion of the month. Her health weakened.

At 17 years old, she fell in love with a neighbor, Roberto, a doctor of letters. Confident, she revealed her love to her mother, who forbade her to continue this exposed relationship, guarding Maria from all dangers the young Maria, frightened, could not even imagine. Her father consoled her in tears. Roberto died some time later in the war that had just broken out. Maria's suffering was unspeakable: she thought one could not suffer more. She was deeply shaken and struggled in "the deepest confusion." Her religious practice wavered. She was assailed by suicidal and sensual thoughts.

At 19 years old, she had a dream that deeply marked her: Satan, initially appearing seductive, tried to divert her from Jesus and take her soul. Jesus ultimately granted her forgiveness with this warning:

"Know that it is not enough not to do evil, but one must also not desire to commit it."

A few years later, upon discovering photographs of the Shroud of Turin, she recognized the face, stature, and hands of the interlocutor from when she was 19.

Maria Valtorta in 1918

At 20 years old, in 1917, she entered as a Samaritan nurse, a volunteer auxiliary caregiver, to care for war wounded. She blossomed in service to others, but narrowly escaped, as did her mother, the Spanish flu epidemic which caused tens of millions of deaths at that time.

At 22 years old, after the war, she met Mario who fell in love with her. Their love was secret for fear of her mother's reaction. This new suitor gradually brought her back to religious practice. When he came to ask for Maria's hand, her mother chased the fiancé away, who however continued to correspond in secret.

Then occurred the event that would change the course of her life: on March 17, 1920, three days after her 23rd birthday, an anarchist violently struck Maria on the loins with an iron bar shouting "Down with the rich and the military!" (Her father was a non-commissioned officer). The pain was atrocious and lasted several months: she thought her end was near and endured it with resignation.

The following summer, convalescing in Calabria with her family, she saw Mario, who tried to soften Maria's mother by letter. Maria Valtorta knew nothing of this exchange of letters: she only received a last love letter as a farewell from her fiancé.

"I conceived such great sorrow," she confessed years later, "that it resists and subsists even in the joy of my total offering to God.".

But this loss of a human love increased her love for God, contrary to the first sorrow.

Maria Valtorta in 1922

At 25 years old, she read for the first time the Gospel of Saint Luke. Until then, she knew the Gospels only through fragments read at Masses. She dreamed it: she followed Jesus in Galilee, listened to His teachings, received communion from His hand, etc.

The following year, she wrote her very first offering to God. The first graces obtained strengthened her vocation. On January 1, 1924, at 27, she renounced the world and took a vow of chastity.

On October 23 of the same year, the Valtorta family settled in Viareggio, a seaside resort in Tuscany. In December, she felt a strong need to have the four Gospels and The Story of a Soul by Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus. She bought them with her pocket money. Overcome with emotion, she joyfully renewed her daily act of offering to merciful love: the sufferings then came upon her "like a rain," she writes.        

On May 21, 1929, at 32 years old, she had a happy stay with her family when she thought she was dying from a sudden attack of illness. Her mother called her at that moment: she laboriously obeyed. Later, she wrote about it:

"For a generous soul, sacrifice is no longer an effort and suffering is no longer a torment… And even one thing only preoccupies a generous soul: she fears not suffering. There lies the reversal of values. … A generous soul is quite incapable of suffering in the bitter way in which those who are un-generous suffer. Suffering remains, because it is inevitable, but it no longer appears as an enemy: it is a friend who helps us to climb higher and higher. The mere thought that this suffering makes us like Christ and makes us continuators of His work gives us an insatiable thirst for ever new and deeper sufferings… I have lived like this for years and have found the peace of the soul."

In her mystical calendar, Maria Valtorta noted beside this episode:

"First contact with death and suffering: Long live love!"

That same year, she pronounced the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Commitment

It was then that she engaged in the female Catholic Action. She soon directed the spiritual reflection there and gave conferences that attracted an increasingly large audience, but the hierarchy of Catholic Action ended her growing influence over the local section.

On Good Friday 1930, she was 33, the final age of Jesus. She suffered a violent attack of angina pectoris at the hour of Christ's agony. It lasted 3 hours. Maria felt as if carried on the cross.

In June of the following year, she went through "a blood agony" which she does not detail. She foresaw upcoming events: wars, famines, massacres, … A few days later, she felt "blossoming in her heart" the terms of her Act of offering as a victim to Divine Justice and Love. It was no longer an offering to Merciful Love as in 1925, but to the Justice of God and Love. Thus, she did not renounce Love, which sprang forth and overwhelmed the rest. On July 1, the feast of the Precious Blood, she solemnly pronounced her oblation. She notably asked:

"I also desire, following your example, to be raised on the cross of suffering, on your cross of salvation which most flee with terror; crucified with you, for you, I want to atone for sinners, obey you for those who rebel, bless you for those who curse you, love you for those who hate you, beg you for those who forget you, live, in a word, in an act of perfect love, relating everything to you, recognizing you in everything, loving all through you and in you, finally accepting all from you, my Infinite Good. O my Beloved God, by the cross I ask you, by the life I offer you, by the love I aspire to, make me a happy victim of your Merciful Love." On this occasion, she took the name 'Maria of the Cross'."

On December 18, 1932, at age 35, she was seized by violent heart attacks during a conference she continued to deliver. She could only return home several hours later without her mother taking note of the incident: her mother prepared dinner for her parents, served them, and washed dishes before going to bed. She was in great physical, moral, and spiritual distress. While suffering martyrdom, she still did the shopping her mother asked for. At Christmas, she attended Mass for the last time.

On January 4, 1933, she was bedridden.

Under her mother’s pressure, Maria had to do the housework as long as she could still get up.

From April 1, 1934, she no longer left her bed except with difficulty and for short trips, but on that day, Easter Sunday, she remained permanently bedridden until her death, 27 years later at age 64.

Disability

In April 1935, she was 38. Isolina Diciotti, a neighbor recently deceased, appeared to her in a dream and entrusted her with her concern for her daughter Marta (1910-2001), aged 25, who was losing faith. Maria Valtorta promised to take care of her and succeeded in getting her hired. She entered the Valtorta’s service on May 24. She was Maria's assistant and confidante for over 26 years until her death.

An unexpected prize earned by Maria Valtorta brought in considerable income: it allowed her mother to cover expenses caused by her daughter's bed confinement and by her husband's declining health. Giuseppe Valtorta died on June 30: it was a terrible shock for his daughter. Bedridden, she could not assist her beloved father and the doctor even refused to transport her. She did not even see the funeral. Worse: her mother violently slapped her for her supposed indifference to her father's death.

During all these years, Maria Valtorta lived as a victim soul. She endured temptations, bullying, slanders, and attacks of suffering, but she confided having made a solemn pact with Jesus: each crisis that seized her earned the redemption of a soul. More and more people came to consult her without her knowing who sent them.

She confided about this:

"I realize, for years now, that it is God who acts in me. For years, that is since I eliminated my human self and have been rebuilt by God, forgetting myself and having only Him in view. Even my own very keen perceptions of what happens in the hearts of others come from nowhere within me. Because by myself, I would be deaf as a mole to all sound waves emanating from my sister souls. But a force, far superior to mine, makes me capable of guessing the needs of creatures. Sometimes I am speechless, realizing that speaking thus, almost by suggestion from another, I really touch a wound. And I confess to myself: It is truly God who works for us when we are totally abandoned to Him."

Her illnesses and infirmities

Spring 1940: Her mother fell seriously ill. Maria Valtorta was deeply affected and unable to care for her. This caused a sudden deterioration in her own health. In her Autobiography, she lists impressively what she calls her "service states".

In addition to the illnesses she already had:

1. A spinal lesion caused by the 1920 attack.
2. An ovarian tumor comparable to ovarian cancer.
3. Myocarditis causing chest pains, fever, and sometimes cardiac stops or arrhythmias.
4. A paresis gradually causing loss of motor abilities in part of the body, but leaving her hands free.
   Suddenly adding::
5. Neuritis that inflamed the optic nerve. She had spasmodic pains so severe she begged the doctor to kill her. Her cardiac state contraindicated most painkillers.
6. Pachymeningitis that made her stiff "like a mummy," she said. The slightest movement made her scream.
7. Bladder inflammation extending to the renal pelvis and kidney cavities (pyelocystitis). Renal and bladder hemorrhage occurred.
8. Peritonitis with symptoms of intestinal obstruction.
9. Pleurisy that formed painful adhesions.
10. Finally, a pulmonary congestion with relapses.

She wrote to her confessor:

"Do you think my suffering is enough? Not at all. Yet it is great. So great that without a special grace from my God, my being could not bear it and my heart would break in a final convulsion. But it is not enough for me. And even if God wanted to increase it, it would never be enough for me, yes never. Never would I be satisfied, because the sufferings of my Savior were infinite and I desire that mine be infinite too.".

From suffering to Light

A dizzying contrast deepened in her life:

On the one hand, the authoritarian tutelage of her mother who had broken her youth and her engagements. On the other, the vocation to suffering often more luminous for others than for herself. This is illuminated by the last years of Thérèse of Lisieux when, in the same sensory and spiritual night, she wanted to be nothing but suffering like Christ on the cross at the hour He uttered His last words according to Mark: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  

Maria Valtorta’s spiritual guide from 1942 to 1946 was Father Romualdo Migliorini (1884-1953). He was a Servite of Mary, a mendicant order founded in Tuscany in the 13th century. He had been Apostolic Prefect of his order in South Africa before becoming Prior of the San Andrea convent in Viareggio. He was struck by the greatness of Maria Valtorta’s soul and asked her to write the story of her life because Maria thought her end was near. She complied in two months, from February to April 1943, at age 46.

At the darkest time of the war, he provided her with the necessary school notebooks. She first wrote her Autobiography, but also all other works inspired to her until 1950. The whole represents 15,000 pages on 122 notebooks.  

Maria Valtorta in 1943

On April 23, 1943, Holy Thursday, Maria Valtorta received her first vision and the dictations of Jesus for our time began.

"Suddenly," she wrote, "I mentally saw a very rocky and arid land, surrounded by a vast horizon. At the very top, a violet plant had grown. Only one violet was fully open. …Then I saw a large board stuck in the ground... About one and a half meters (perhaps less) above the ground, I saw two pierced feet. Blood flowed down along the heels to the ground. Other drops dripped from the toes onto the clump of violets. So it was toward that—the unique violet tuft of greenery in this sterile land—that the violet turned: toward the blood that nourished it. With its silent word, Jesus told me that my place is more than ever at the foot of the cross. I must draw my life only from his Blood. My only duty is to be the incense at the foot of His Redeemer’s throne. Incense exhales its fragrance only when burning and consuming: that is what I must do. The vision also told me that the flower can attract other eyes to the cross … by accepting to live, for that purpose, in an arid desert, alone with the cross."

On October 4, 1943, her mother died. Maria Valtorta implored the presence and solicitude of Jesus because she felt the abandonment of the orphan, bedridden in pain. Jesus tenderly consoled her and revealed:

"(Your mother) did not thank you, but I say it for her. And now, she already tells you because my Light has illuminated horizons that her humanity had hidden from her. Do not weep, my daughter. Continue to pray and suffer for her and hope in me."

Then He added:

"The hour of her judgment had to be good before now. I came twice during your years of pain to observe that spiritual plant that even your prayers could not make produce fruits of eternal life. Twice I had the axe ready in my hand to cut down this life that resisted the invitations of grace. Twice I held back the blow to allow that soul not to come to me devoid of good works."

She had ended her Autobiography with this plea:

"Because of my hidden sacrifice every moment, O Father, give me crowds of souls to offer you. Make them advance, and me also, in the light."

Illness and composition of the work

In 1943, bedridden for nine years, Maria Valtorta thought her end was near. Her confessor, impressed by the zeal of this victim soul, asked her to write her life. She complied in less than two months.

As the pages progressed, the dialogue with Jesus became more present and intimate. Abruptly, on Holy Thursday, she received the vision of Jesus on the Cross and the meaning of His Mission: She could attract other gazes to the cross "by accepting to live, for that purpose, in an arid desert, alone with the cross." She accepted.

She then started "receiving" the scenes of the Gospel. They were written without apparent order, in a single draft, without erasures.

All her writings were recorded in 13,193 pages of school notebooks from which her work "The Gospel as Revealed to Me" is extracted: 10 volumes and 5,374 pages. This work was completed on April 28, 1947, by a dictation of Christ. Its composition lasted four years, almost to the day.

Visions and dictations continued at a slower pace until 1953, then ceased, at least those recorded in Maria Valtorta’s other writings.

During this period, she was accompanied by Father Romualdo Migliorini, a Servite of Mary (o.s.m.) who became the zealous, even excessive, promoter of the work.

Maria Valtorta describes what she calls her work:

"writing under dictation or describing what is presented to me. If it is dictation and it relates to a passage of the Bible, Jesus begins by making me open the Book to the passage He wants to explain. […] If it is a vision that presents itself, as I said, with an initial image which is usually the climax of the vision, and then unfolds following order […] I describe this point, then what precedes and what follows.".

Maria Valtorta discreetly mentions, in some personal notes, the sufferings she endures. But Jesus, in a dictation, is more explicit and of more general scope:

"If you knew what slavery it is to be an instrument of God […] It brings sleeplessness, hunger, sufferings, fatigue, desire to think of something else, to read writings that are not words of supernatural source, to speak and hear ordinary things, the desire to be and live like everyone else, even if only for one day: all this, the inexorable burning of God’s will prevents from having and realizing it. Over all this, the malice of men deposits its salt and acid, as if the galley master put salt and vinegar on the burns of his slaves.".

End of life

The last years of her life were painful: from 1956, Maria Valtorta withdrew into a kind of psychic isolation after having offered everything to God, including her own intelligence. Emilio Pisani, her chronicler, interprets this last immolation as a response to the opposition that her work began to encounter.

Like all her illnesses—ten in total—this prostration remains inexplicable in many aspects. It was interpreted as a sign of madness by opponents, but more grounded scientific opinions prove that this is not the case.

Maria Valtorta’s tomb

She passed away on October 12, 1961, at 10:35 a.m. Twenty months earlier, she had seen her work placed on the Index. According to Jesus' directives, its publication was to be posthumous. As a spiritual testament, Maria Valtorta left this phrase as a remembrance: "I have finished suffering, but I will continue to love". On July 2, 1973, her remains were transferred from Viareggio to Florence in a chapel of the Santissima Annunziata. Her tomb, in one of the chapels, mentions her titles of glory:

Tertii ordinis servorum Sanctae Maria sodalis (Tertiary of the Servite Order of Mary) – Hostia Deo grata (Host pleasing to God) – Divinarum rerum scriptrix (Writer of divine things, or historian of God).

Cause for beatification

A first attempt to introduce her cause for beatification, supported by the Servites of Mary of Florence, did not succeed. The archbishop of Tuscany, after consulting the bishops, judged it inappropriate "at least for the moment" (almeno per il momento).

On October 15, 2011, the mass for the fiftieth anniversary of her death was celebrated in Florence by a former apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Pier Giacomo De Nicolò, titular archbishop of Martana.

The following year, in the last year of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI beatified in quick succession two fervent promoters of Maria Valtorta’s works: Mother Maria Arias Espinosa (1904–1981), founder of the Missionary Poor Clares of the Most Holy Sacrament, then Father Gabriele Allegra (1907–1976), translator of the Bible into Chinese.

In 2019, on the initiative of the Maria Valtorta Heritage Foundation, Me Carlo Fusco, advocate of the Roman Rota and postulator for the cause of saints, was given the mandate to act before ecclesiastical authorities to collect testimonies about Maria Valtorta’s life and, at that occasion, the proof of heroic exercise of her practice of Christian virtues.

A priest of the Vicariate of Rome has begun to collect testimonies accordingly.

Notes and references

Note: Quotations from the work of Maria Valtorta on this page currently use machine-translated text and will gradually be replaced by the official English translation. Until then, the official translation may be consulted through the reference link provided with each quotation.

Person who presents themselves to a priest to confess their sins and have them forgiven by God by receiving the sacrament of penance (or reconciliation).

Preliminary stage to canonization recognizing that a deceased person can be called Blessed because of their holiness.