Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero and Maria Valtorta

Portrait of Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero (1885-1916), created by AI from known photographs.

Before she had received her visions, Maria Valtorta was struck by the similarity, which she discovered, between her meditations and the dialogues held by Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero (1885-1916) with Jesus. From there arose a spiritual companionship that she extended to the writings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, her spiritual godmother.

When the visions constituting The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me began, Jesus repeatedly insisted that for the dissemination of the work, the method adopted by the promoters of Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero's spiritual journal (Vade-mecum) should be followed. This was not heeded, which Maria Valtorta regretted.

Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero

She was born in Turin on August 6, 1885, into a deeply Christian family where devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was very present. This oriented her religious vocation towards the Order of the Visitation (Visitandines), to which St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, promoter of this devotion, had belonged. Her vocation was very early: she made a temporary vow of chastity with the permission of her confessor in 1900 (she was 15) and began in 1902 to write her spiritual journal in which she recorded her dialogues with Jesus.

In 1906, she entered the monastery of the Visitation in Pinerolo (Piedmont) but the mystical path she proposed worried the superior. She then went to the monastery of the Visitation in Como where she received the name Benigna Consolata.

Until her death, she lived an unknown life, faithful to all her duties and absorbed in God. Benigna perceived Christian holiness as a "multitude of little acts", a perspective close to that of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

Having offered herself as a sacrifice on June 30, 1916, the feast of the Sacred Heart, she quickly wasted away and died the same year (September 1, 1916).

Her reputation quickly spread, and excerpts from her writings, soon translated into ten languages, began to be published from 1917 onwards. In these daily written pages, she expressed her inner light, all animated by limitless trust and total surrender to God's infinite love for each one. Her biographers called her the apostle (or the little secretary) of divine mercy.

Maria Valtorta felt in deep spiritual harmony with Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero, explicitly linking this affinity to the legacy of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, whom she considered her "spiritual godmother." All three, though living in different contexts — cloistered Carmelite for Thérèse, monastery for Benigna, bedridden immobility for Maria Valtorta — developed a spirituality centered on the merciful Love of Christ. The Theresian "little way," based on trust and offering to Love, found in Benigna a marked emphasis on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and reparative surrender, while in Maria Valtorta it unfolded in a mystical participation in the Passion and a detailed contemplation of the Savior’s life. Their major common point lies in spiritual fruitfulness lived in suffering and smallness, as well as in a mission essentially interior yet of universal scope: to make known, love, and repair the unrecognized divine Love.

In the work of Maria Valtorta

Autobiography

p. 267 - "I had caused so much pain to good God! Fogazzaro convinced me that no fault is too great to escape redemption, that the memory of a past fault should never obstruct our progress towards God, and that one must not offend good God by believing that He is so little a Father that He appears more as Judge than as Savior. Later I found this Doctrine in the writings of the Blessed Claude de la Colombière and especially in those of Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero, which are simply dictated by Jesus himself."

p. 266 - “Ruysbroek asserts — and he is one of the few whom I can understand along with Saint Paul, Saint Catherine, Saint Francis of Assisi among the ancients, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and Sister Benigna among contemporaries — Ruysbroek therefore asserts: ‘When God comes into you, it is because you were already in Him, for He never goes out of Himself...’"

pp. 347-348 - "I want you to become a Victim of Divine Justice in addition to the relief of My Love.” (Jesus Christ to Sister Benigna).

“The burning hunger I have to save souls pushes me to seek victims to associate with my work of love,” Jesus said to Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero. At the time, I did not yet know this nun. But the need to offer myself also to Justice as I had offered myself to Love was becoming urgent in my Heart. By pure chance, I got to know this little secretary of Jesus.

For some time, various people, consecrated or not, were asking me if I had borrowed some of my thoughts from the writings of this nun, as they corresponded perfectly. But I did not even know that Sister Benigna had existed! So I wanted to know her. And Jesus, always courteous, set me on the path. One day I had a small pamphlet about her in my hands. I had the guiding thread. I wrote to the monastery of the Visitation of Como to request all the works of the Servant of God [...]

pp. 357-358 - "So I wrote to the Visitation convent of Como to get the writings of Sister Benigna. I received them during Lent, I believe. In any case, it was spring.

Reading these writings, I realized that I had truly had thoughts identical to hers. And upon learning that these phrases had been said by Jesus, I was moved to tears. So I, a poor creature, had been able in my love to find expressions and thoughts similar to those of my Savior? He was so present and active in me that He made me say the same things that He had said to Sister Benigna to offer souls a new means of sanctification and a new proof of His love?

Even now, when, without realizing it, I write a letter or speak expressing 'my' thought, and then find that thought almost identically in a phrase from the visitandine nun's 'Vademecum,' I tremble with joy.

There are times when I refrain for months from reading her writings to avoid being unknowingly influenced... but then I must realize, after months, that I remain in close resemblance to her writings.

From this, I draw a conclusion. If three souls who have lived in countries and cultures as diverse as little Thérèse, Benigna, and I express ourselves with the same words, it means that when God fully occupies a heart with His Presence, He arouses the same feelings within it. These are sparks of His charity, originating from a single source, but flowing through three channels, different by their merits, including mine which is the most rudimentary and faulty, yet expressing the same light. They are like the notes of the same love poem; they have the same sound, even if one of the three instruments playing them, mine, is played by a creature still far from perfection.

Once I had 'one' friend in the person of the Little Flower. Now I had 'two', since Sister Benigna had also become for me a friend in heaven. Between these two, who are great victims, I confidently proceed on the path that leads me to Calvary. They encourage me, smile upon me, and indicate an ever-closer light... It is in this light that my dear Jesus hides."

p. 385 - "I was increasingly suffering, but I kept going forward nonetheless. I believed that soon everything would be consumed. Human impatience, how foolish you are before the divine calm of the Eternal! The third conference was, as the previous year, on the “anti-tuberculosis struggle.” That is to say, no; the third was about Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero and the fourth dealt with the Day Against Tuberculosis combined with the Catholic University Day, whose events closely followed each other."

The Notebooks of 1943

August 23 - [Jesus said:] "Good sense must be used in the handling of my gift. Act as you did with Sister Benigna. Not an open and resounding dissemination, but a slow expansion that grows broader and remains unnamed. And this to protect your spirit which Pride could disturb and your person who does not need other agitations. When your hand will be still in Peace awaiting its resurrection in glory, then, and 'only' then, your name will be mentioned."

October 11 - [Maria Valtorta:] "I was praying this morning at 5:30, holding the prayers of Sister Benigna Consolata. I read the point: 'What to do in a state of dryness.' Every day, I read a point that remains the religious thought for the whole day. I read: 'Calling the sweetest names', and I asked Jesus: 'What are the sweetest names for You?'.

He answered me instantly with the words I wrote. I believe He wants to speak to me about the 'Song of Songs' to lead me to a true incandescent state. I believe... Because sometimes He changes the subject after a point and I can only follow Him.

Believe me, Father [Migliorini], I wept from sweetness and I felt, even physically, enveloped and ignited by flames."

December 9 - [Jesus said:] "So remember for the moment that I will mark with my sign all the work of my ‘spokesperson’ and give to the poor of this world, despite their condition, what must be given to them. And pray not to be led astray by your humanity in your choices.

Regarding today’s events, [Father Migliorini] has already been able to ascertain their concurrency and can testify. For the rest, I repeat, let him act as did the director of Benigna, who lived in better times than these and who had in his hands a less explosive material, so to speak, remaining within the note of present time, full of explosions, not so much chemical powders as infernal substances."

The Notebooks of 1944

September 24 - [Jesus said:] "I had said from the beginning that my spokesperson must be left in Peace, surrounded by veils of silence, which should not be lifted until after his death. When the prayers and desires of a person I love and whose always right intention makes me pleased inclined me to show indulgence, I established clauses and guidelines to protect my instrument. I said: 'Let people behave as they did towards Sister Benigna Consolata.' When I saw that exaggeration arose and people ventured into fields that simple human prudence deemed should be avoided, I stopped all dictation related to current times, and indicated that this was a punishment for those who sought to satisfy human curiosity and transformed a grandiose reality, supernaturally grandiose, into a toy suitable for children who, to outwit their rivals, claim: ‘I know, I possess; you do not know and do not possess. Look what I have, look, look, I know, I know...’ But this is not child's play. It concerns the interests of God and the Peace of a Heart. Be careful, all you men!"

October 16 - [Maria Valtorta said:] "At noon, I said to Jesus: 'Yes, Lord, lead me by the hand' (I was reading a phrase dictated by Jesus to Sister Benigna, which was my thought for the day). I want what You want and nothing else. But I fear the world..."

Jesus, who knows what kind of fear I mean, answered me: "If they imposed silence on you without recognizing that it is in my name and by my will that you act as you do, answer them in the same way as Peter and John did before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:18-20) after the healing of the crippled man: ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to obey you rather than God, you judge. For we cannot (I cannot), as for us (me), not speak the things we have (I have) seen and heard.’ You could not, moreover, prevent me from coming to you and forcing you to see and hear. And it would be foolish on your part to listen to the world that wants to silence God rather than God who wants to bring light to the world. If I want it, who can be against me?"

October 20 - [Jesus said:] "Go in Peace. Your Jesus does nothing without a perfect purpose. As for everything else you wish to know, I repeat to you: 'Behave as they did towards Sister Benigna.' "

My blessing rests on the good. My blessing rests on the nascent Work. Enter into the circle of this preparation of souls for the coming of my Kingdom, of this cohesion to resist the Disintegrator of the world, who accelerates his actions and makes them more subtle to demolish rapidly and completely. You can therefore give to the Work itself what you have: your sufferings, your prayers, your own works."

Letters to Mother Teresa Maria

Volume 1 - February 7, 1946, p. 58 : "Now the Work was never protected with the prudence first advised, then ordered by Our Lord: from May 1943, at the first hint by Father Migliorini to make copies and distribute them, he said: ‘Act as you did with Sister Benigna Consolata Ferrero. It is only when the spokesperson is in the grave that the dissemination of the Work will be undertaken, with the necessary precautions.”’ This was repeated at least six times in two and a half years, and always in an increasingly firm tone.

Unfortunately, none of this was heeded. From 1943, while my mother was terminally ill, I had the pain and shame of learning that I was known as the one who received the dictations, due to the imprudence and indiscretion of the superior of the nurse sisters attending my mother.

Yes! What shame! What embarrassment! Because those are the feelings we experience when creatures enter our royal secret. [32]

No, being known and praised does not bring us any joy, only pain, as if we were being exposed, along with the fear of an involuntary feeling of complacency. At least that is what I feel when I understand that someone knows that I am the spokesperson...

And starting in 1943, they continued to make a fuss around it, acting more and more broadly, more indiscreetly and disobediently. They began to distribute booklets, pamphlets, leaflets, news, indiscriminately, without regard to the recipient, without verifying whether they were delivered… Meanwhile, it was as if I was receiving a blow to the chest: I understood everything, I cried, I worried… But the system continued… and still does. Now, you tell me that it is Father Migliorini himself who allowed you to inform the spiritual Fathers, and that has been for two years already! Well, goodness, that is perfect! Truly, God’s orders are well executed! Am I then the only one naive enough to respect the order?

Volume 2 - January 11, 1947, p. 20 : "The other evening, I was talking to Jesus about these conversions. I asked Him: ‘Are You beginning to work as You did with the writings of Sister Benigna Consolata?’

He answered me: ‘You do not know how many people you have saved by your Mission. You too are my Secretary. She: Benigna Consolata. You: Mary of Sorrows. You are therefore even more mine and that of my Mother, and you bear my strongest sign: Suffering. You are very dear to me because you are Mary and because you suffer. Suffering on Earth. Consoled, Blessed here in Heaven.’"

Layperson (laic) living in the world but following the rules of life of a particular religious order.