Maria Valtorta Heir Foundation

Maria Valtorta Heir Foundation

General Information
Type	Non-profit foundation (onlus / ente del terzo settore)
Foundation	2010 (statutes revised in 2020)
Founders	Emilio Pisani, Claudia Vecchiarelli, with participation of the Valtortian Editorial Center
Headquarters	Isola del Liri, Italy
Official language	Italian (with communications in English and French)
President	Fiammeta Pagnanelli
Website	https://mariavaltorta.com
Mission
Main objectives	To preserve the manuscripts, archives, and Goods related to Maria Valtorta; to protect and restore the house in Viareggio; to promote academic study, critical editions, multilingual dissemination, exhibitions, and to support the study of her work from both a religious and literary perspective.

The Maria Valtorta Heir Foundation (or Fondazione Erede di Maria Valtorta), is an Italian non-profit entity established to oversee the preservation, enhancement, and dissemination of the work and literary heritage of the Catholic mystic and Italian writer Maria Valtorta. It currently serves as the central institution safeguarding the documentary core (manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence) as well as heritage elements (house-museum, family archives), while supporting initiatives aimed at deepening and spreading knowledge of the legacy left by Maria Valtorta, for evangelization purposes.

History

At Maria Valtorta’s death in 1961, her heirs were the Order of the Servites of Mary and Marta Diciotti. The Servite Order, a religious congregation founded in 1233 by seven Florentine merchants and now active worldwide, inherited the Valtorta house located in Viareggio. Marta Diciotti, devoted assistant and confidante of the writer during her long years of illness, inherited all the manuscripts, with all related rights, as well as the personal effects of the author. A life usufruct right on the house was also reserved for her.

In 1986, Marta Diciotti made a will in favor of the publishing house Valtortian Editorial Center (CEV), entrusting the publisher Emilio Pisani with the Mission to continue publishing the writings. In 1998, while Marta Diciotti was still alive but residing in a retirement home, the Servite Order sold the Viareggio house to the CEV. A few years later, Emilio Pisani, helped by volunteers, undertook a full restoration of the building, particularly to remediate humidity, and reopened it to visitors from all over the world.

At Marta Diciotti’s death in 2001, the CEV became owner of all of Maria Valtorta’s material and moral heritage. The need arose to entrust this heritage to an independent legal entity capable of guaranteeing its preservation and long-term management. It was in this context that, in 2010, Emilio Pisani and his wife, Claudia Vecchiarelli, founded the Fondazione Maria Valtorta CEV Onlus, endowed with nonprofit status. This legal change clarified roles, established a dedicated board of directors, and launched governance adapted to the demands of the Italian nonprofit cultural sector. The CEV then returned to its primary editorial activity, while the Foundation took charge of rights management, manuscripts, Goods, and dissemination initiatives.

On February 10, 2020, the Fondazione Maria Valtorta CEV changed its name to become the Maria Valtorta Heir Foundation (Fondazione Erede di Maria Valtorta), thus officially asserting its role as custodian of the writer’s complete heritage..

Mission and legal status

Maria Valtorta’s room in her restored historic house, now used as a museum by the Foundation.

The Foundation describes its Mission as follows:

To promote knowledge of Jesus Christ

This is the Mission of the Heir Foundation which, through the reading of the works of Maria Valtorta, aims to depict the life of Jesus Christ, a Man among men, who grew up and lived with the Holy Mother, with the Apostles in the world around Him. The objective is to form Women and men transformed in their behavior according to the teachings of Jesus.

“We must now continue the illustration of the Gospel for this poor Catholic world which no longer knows how to recognize in it the heavenly pearl of all sacred culture, the indispensable, the unsurpassable.” (Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks of 1944, November 14)

This will be carried out according to the following objectives:

• To share the moral and spiritual values of Maria Valtorta’s literary work in the name of brotherhood.
• To maintain the literary integrity of Maria Valtorta’s work, without any alteration or dismemberment.
• To translate the work into all languages.
• To expand the Foundation to all continents in order to create a Valtortian network for evangelization purposes. A network that maintains perfect adherence to Maria Valtorta’s writings, showing unity in methods and content of evangelization.
• To preserve and offer any memorabilia of the person of Maria Valtorta as a Good of public interest.

• To preserve and protect Maria Valtorta’s original manuscripts to confirm that all printed material is compliant, and to take care of the maintenance and management of the Valtorta house-museum (the casa Valtorta) in Viareggio, a living testimony to the events that took place there, so that it remains open to visitors from all over Italy and worldwide, and that certain cultural activities can be conducted there if necessary to promote Valtorta’s writings.

The Foundation is formally registered as a non-profit organization (onlus under Italian law), specifically designed to preserve the Valtortian heritage long-term in its various forms—material, intellectual, spiritual. Its goal is to centralize the conservation of original manuscripts, correspondence, photographic documents, as well as to ensure the enhancement of the resource site (the Viareggio house). Moreover, it promotes editorial activities in several languages, often in collaboration with the CEV, in both print and digital formats, targeting a spiritually, academically, and literarily oriented readership. Cultural and commemorative events, temporary exhibitions, symposia, as well as dissemination of content via multimedia platforms complement these action areas, aimed at international outreach.

Organization and governance

Emilio Pisani, historic publisher of Maria Valtorta’s works and founder of the Maria Valtorta Heir Foundation with his wife, Claudia Vecchiarelli.

Governance is based on a board of directors that appoints a president and a vice-president and distributes responsibilities between the executive and supervisory bodies.

Among the key initial board members (2010) were historically the founders Emilio Pisani (1935–2023), historic publisher of Maria Valtorta’s writings (CEV), and Claudia Vecchiarelli (1943–2012), his wife, as well as experts in heritage management, archiving, and archaeology, to ensure rigorous administration.

The Foundation publishes and updates the composition of its board of directors on its official website.

The Foundation also maintains strategic partnerships with religious institutions, universities, specialized publishers, and literary heritage associations to multiply synergies and promote the diffusion of the Valtortian work in different cultural and linguistic contexts.

Goods, sites, and archives

The Foundation is custodian of a rich documentary collection including original manuscript Notebooks (1943–1950), correspondence, period photographs, old editions, notes, and other unpublished documents. It also ensures the legal safeguarding of copyright related to the complete work in different language formats. The central heritage site is the house in Viareggio, where Maria Valtorta lived and died. Restored and open to the public as a house-museum, it serves as a place of study and contemplation. The restoration recreated a museographic path blending reading spaces, a video library, archival showcases, and a meeting place for researchers and spiritual or literary visitors.

See also

• Maria Valtorta — biography.
• Valtortian Editorial Center — publishing house dedicated to the publication of Maria Valtorta’s writings.
• The Work Given to Maria Valtorta — literary heritage of Maria Valtorta.