Verbal imprimatur of Pius XII and its canonical value

Pius XII in September 1945

There has been speculation about the canonical value of the verbal encouragement given by Pius XII at the end of the audience he granted on February 26, 1948, to Fathers Corrado Berti, Romualdo Migliorini, and Andrea Cecchin after having received and read the typescript of Maria Valtorta's work.

According to Father Berti, who noted the Pope’s words upon leaving the audience, he would have said:

"Publish the work as it is. There is no reason to give an opinion on its origin, whether extraordinary or not. Those who read it will understand."

A report by the Holy Office (Mgr Giovanni Pepe) dated February 2, 1949, more briefly notes:

"His Holiness very wisely ordered them to address an Ordinary to obtain the Imprimatur for the publication of the 'Words of Eternal Life' or 'Gospel of Jesus Christ' which was their interest. And they went in search of this Ordinary."

The words of the Sovereign Pontiff have been subject to contradictory interpretations regarding the deep intentions of the Holy Father, their exact wording, and their canonical value: did these words have the force of ecclesiastical law? Did they prevail over the opinion of the Holy Office hostile to the publication of these writings? Indeed, after the Pope's death (October 9, 1958), Maria Valtorta’s work was placed on the Index (December 16, 1959, published January 6, 1960).

Historical Analysis

The Will of the Holy Father and the Inclusion on the Index

Some have claimed that Pius XII reversed his position on February 17, 1949, by approving decisions of the Holy Office, but this analysis is refuted on three grounds:

• The Pope approved the decisions with the express exception of the one that would have officially and publicly condemned Maria Valtorta’s work (point no. 2).
• Subsequently (1952) the Holy Office commissioned a assessment report to Fr. Augustin Bea. An unnecessary initiative if Maria Valtorta’s work had indeed been condemned.
• The first three volumes of Maria Valtorta’s work were published during Pius XII’s lifetime without reaction from the Holy Office, which waited until the Pope's death (October 9, 1958) to place Maria Valtorta’s writings on the Index (December 16, 1959, published January 6, 1960).

The historical issue therefore is whether this final condemnation (now-abolished Index) was initiated by the repentant Pope or, as some Valtorta supporters argue, by the Holy Office of the time acting against papal will.

Reconstruction of the testimonies

According to what Cardinal Édouard Gagnon reported in his 1992 correspondence with Father Kevin Robinson, the Holy Office states that "Pius XII never gave an Imprimatur."

This raises questions as the Holy Office, after Pius XII’s death, reconstructed the Maria Valtorta file: registered under number 355/45 under Pius XII, it was renumbered 144/58 at his death.

One conjectures about the reasons for this new numbering and its content. It is this new file that served for the placement on the Index (1959/1960) and will be the documentary basis for Cardinal Ratzinger (1985). According to Father Berti’s testimony, he apparently had no record of Pius XII’s intervention since Father Marco Giraudo, whom he met in December 1960, was unaware of it. It was upon learning of this verbal imprimatur that Father Giraudo deemed it prudent to grant a "verbal" lifting of the Index.

The first file included, as of February 17, 1949, Pius XII’s refusal to publish a notification condemning Maria Valtorta’s work. This seems no longer to appear in the new file since the author of the article in the Osservatore Romano of January 6, 1960 no longer finds the exact date and speaks of "memories".

Canonicity of the Verbal Imprimatur According to Cardinal Édouard Gagnon

Cardinal Édouard Gagnon (1918-2007), who studied this particular point, exchanged correspondence on the subject with a Canadian compatriot, Professor Léo A. Brodeur, particularly active in promoting and deepening the work of Maria Valtorta. At the time of this correspondence (1987), he was not in charge of these issues at the Vatican but was reputed as a specialist on book censorship, a topic on which he wrote a thesis in 1944 to obtain a doctorate in Canon Law.

In his response to Professor Brodeur, the cardinal did not retract but tempered: "However, the kind of official Imprimatur granted by the Holy Father in 1948 before witnesses is abolished by the New Code." This is doubly incorrect:

- No article of the 1983 Code of Canon Law states that previous decisions, especially papal ones, are abolished.

- The new organization, more decentralized, does not abolish the papal privilege in this matter. The 1983 code clarifies what the 1917 code condensed:

• Canon 749 treats doctrinal infallibility: "The Supreme Pontiff, by virtue of his office, enjoys infallibility in the magisterium when, as Pastor and Supreme Doctor of all the faithful to whom it belongs to confirm his brethren in faith, he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine to be held regarding faith or morals."

• Canons 331 to 333 state the primacy of jurisdiction (discipline, governance, legislation, etc.): "he possesses in the Church, by virtue of his office, the ordinary, supreme, full, immediate, and universal power which he can always freely exercise."

• Canon 1404 guarantees his absolute juridical independence: "The First See is judged by no one."

Cardinal Édouard Gagnon gives an incomplete answer that suggests a new organization entails a new assignment.

All the evolution in legislation regarding private revelations has tended to decentralize judgment in this matter without removing the ultimate power of the pope. The new procedural norms for the Discernment of presumed supernatural phenomena reserve to the pope alone the right to exceptionally decree the supernatural origin of a phenomenon, with the dicastery and bishops only pronouncing on the authorization to adhere to it with human and prudent faith. Medjugorje (sometimes associated with the Maria Valtorta case) provides an example: rejected by the local episcopate, this apparition has obtained the highest degree of confidence that the Church can grant.

Current Value

Cardinal Édouard Gagnon did not pass judgment on Maria Valtorta’s work, which he had not read, but referred with trust to what was being said about it, notably concerning the abolition of the Index, which officially retained the value of a moral warning. But a "warning to the mature conscience of the faithful" does not indirectly maintain condemnation, which would be a subterfuge.

Value of the sensus fidelium regarding the abolition of the Index

The Notification on the Suppression of the Index of Prohibited Books explicitly states: "the Index no longer has the force of ecclesiastical law with the attached censures." It can therefore no longer be maintained directly or indirectly. This does not mean that the Church leaves free reign to everything. The Notification specifies that it will intervene but in the spirit of the motu proprio Integrae servandae, which replaced the Holy Office by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This spirit aims to substitute "pastors" for "censors".

The Notification also introduces the "Mature Conscience of the faithful," which legislation will formalize subsequently in the realm of private revelations. The Index is now only a historical act warning to "beware of writings that may endanger faith and good morals." It no longer retains its "force of ecclesiastical law."

Maria Valtorta was canonically placed on the Index for lack of Imprimatur. This obligation was abolished in 1975 for works like those of Maria Valtorta. The Osservatore Romano only expressed an authoritative opinion which has since been challenged both by analysis and by the subsequent stances of competent authorities. That is why Civiltà cattolica could write to a reader on April 23, 1996:

"Since it is clear that the books of Maria Valtorta not only do not constitute a danger to your faith, but rather strengthen it, and that in this reading your Conscience is serene also because of the comfort of the authoritative testimonies you cited, it seems to me that you can continue your reading without yielding to doubts or scruples or, even less, to disagreements that some scholars express about the work of Maria Valtorta."

Status Update on the Words of Authority (2025)

Pope Francis and Benedict XVI, July 5, 2013

A certain trend of opinion believed it recognized in the statement of the Dicastery on February 22, 2025 the epilogue of a radical Vatican opposition manifested 65 years earlier with the placing on the Index. Maria Valtorta’s writings would not be of supernatural origin and would even be harmful or dangerous.

But such a condemnation could not be tied to the new norms issued in 2024 (which would make it ecclesiastical law), in fact:

• The judgement of the Dicastery concerns not the work but the manner of considering it.

• Non-supernatural origin would lead to prohibition both de jure and de facto, which is not indicated here.

• It would be motivated by serious and proven facts of deception and falsification. Which is not the case.

• It would be stamped with the official mention "constat de non surnaturalitate," totally absent.

• It would refer to conclusions of the Ordinary of the place (Archbishop of Lucca in this case), nonexistent and not mentioned.

And especially, such an interpretation would accuse Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Lucca of endorsing and encouraging such a harmful work, worthy of the most degrading official assessments.

Indeed, Pope Francis, in his letter dated February 24, 2024, addressed to the President of the Maria Valtorta Foundation (Viareggio), "[encourages] [him/her] to continue with as much commitment [his/her] mission of making known the life of Maria Valtorta and her literary work, particularly all that it can offer for the good of the Church and society. Forward!"

The Archbishop of Lucca in his five pastorals (2021-2023) permits the reading of the work and encourages further in-depth examination.

Such a hypothesis, which would touch two pillars of the Church, seems astonishing to many. Yet it echoes an attitude once held by the Holy Office pointing out the naivety of the "illustrious personalities (whose unquestionable good faith was surprised) who supported publication." The formula is sufficiently ambiguous not to know if this reproach was aimed at the deceased Pope who had also encouraged the dissemination of this popular work.

The Conditional Imprimatur

Four times ecclesiastical authorities have ruled on Maria Valtorta’s writings.

• In 1992: The Secretary of the Italian Episcopal Conference issued, in a friendly tone, a pastoral reading advice later embraced, 33 years later (2025), by the Dicastery: The Visions and Dictations of Maria Valtorta "cannot be considered of supernatural origin but must be perceived simply as literary forms used by the Author to tell, her way, the life of Jesus." This formulation reflects the unchanged position of the Church to date.

• In 1993, Bishop Raymond J. Boland of Birmingham, Alabama, replying to Mr. Terry Colafrancesco who inquired about the Church's position, stated that it was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who had asked the Italian bishops' conference to write this letter to the Italian publisher. While any edition had been prohibited by the placement on the Index (1959/1960), and then was discouraged (Cardinal J. Ratzinger, 1985), this reissue was no longer proscribed but conditioned by how it was apprehended (conditional imprimatur). Nothing now opposes its dissemination except the use that might be made of it (substitution for the canonical Gospel). The original letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was dated April 17, 1993, and bore reference 144/58. Professor Brodeur interprets this as a "reversal" of Cardinal J. Ratzinger’s position.

• The doctrinal commission of the French episcopal conference. In 2021, it "warns" to beware of the "unrecognized" work and in some regards ostracizes its readership.

• And finally, the Dicastery, which reprises Cardinal J. Ratzinger’s position echoed by the Italian episcopal conference. It is careful to show why the insistent request for "recognition" is canonically inadmissible. Maria Valtorta’s work is not part of the official canon of Scripture (it is "apocryphal"), which Jesus himself had declared to Maria Valtorta.

In all four cases, the intervention was motivated by the influx of requests. The readership movement is now perceptible on the universal Church scale. This sign of the work’s durability and popularity is directed towards the Catholic Church and is therefore not schismatic.

The Prudential Reading with Human Faith

In his theological commentary on the Fatima secret (2000) and later in his post-synodal exhortation (2010), Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) recalls that the Church never gives "the assent of faith" to private revelations; it only declares that they may be published (imprimatur) and that they contain nothing contrary to faith or morals (Nihil obstat). Consequently, it is licit to accept them "with prudence." It is by this standard that the "prudential reading" of human faith is to be understood as requested of Maria Valtorta’s readers. A requirement difficult to understand for those who legitimately and experientially think that this work is divinely inspired and proclaim it at all times and against all odds.

In-depth research on God, faith, religious Doctrine.

Official document of the pope summarizing and developing guidelines for the Church resulting from the conclusions of a synod of bishops.

Also called "ordinary of the place", he has the authority to judge the authenticity of private revelations occurring in his territory. His prior discernment is required by the Church to pronounce.

Authority in matters of faith and morals exercised over the Catholic faithful by the pope and all bishops in communion with the pope.

Manifestation of the Holy Spirit after the Bible to a person or particular group. It is individual and relative.

The whole of truths revealed by God to humanity through the Bible. It is complete and definitive in the Christian faith.