“Tell the Author: let Him smoothes out the difficulties”
Msgr. Carinci was an influential man in the Vatican and very important to Maria Valtorta: “He was born in Rome on November 9, 1862, reigning Pius IX. A priest since 1885, he became the Master of Ceremonies of Leo XIII and was a confidant of his successor Pius X. From 1911 to 1930 he was the Rector of the Almo Collegio Capranica in Rome. From 1930 to 1960 he was the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, which would later be called the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. For having renounced the cardinalate more than once, he was elected titular Archbishop of Seleucia of Isauria in 1945, at the age of 83. At the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, he is celebrated as the oldest bishop in the world. Without ever having lost his lucidity of mind, he died at the age of 101 on Dec. 6, 1963” (Cf. “Letters to Bishop Carinci”, p. 13 – Italian edition).
He visited Maria Valtorta in her room in Viareggio, believing her, becoming her “devotee”, and exchanging several letters later collected in the epistolary “Letters to Maria Valtorta”, published by Centro Editoriale Valtortiano in 2006 (only in Italian).
He was important precisely because he lived in the Vatican, next to the Pope, Secretary of a Vatican Congregation – equivalent to a minister of the Italian state –, responsible for discerning a person’s holiness. In short, “a trump” to be played well to obtain the two results Maria Valtorta strongly sought: ecclesiastical approval of her writings and their publication. Given the volume of the writings, the financial commitment would in any case have been – yesterday more than today – beyond burdensome, and impossible for her. Maria Valtorta had already written several times to Msgr. Carinci showing him the unjust difficulties raised by many in and outside the Vatican. Msgr. Carinci always replied to her in an almost telegraphic manner, and the last time he had used a seemingly tranchant argument: “Tell the Author: let Him smooths out the difficulties. It’s up to the Author”. As if to say: if it is Jesus who wants the approval and printing of the writings in such a clear manner, well let Him solve the problems. From his chair Msgr. Carinci had already noticed this mode of Heaven’s action many times, and that is why he proposed it, perhaps provocatively, to her as well. We need only recall, for example, how the very serious accusations against St. Pio of Pietrelcina had been resolved by Heaven.
On July 24, 1950, Maria Valtorta responded to Carinci by giving him arguments – fulfilled prophecies – that showed how the writings came from Heaven and not from her imagination; in other words, it would be enough to discern it well to understand it. But there is something surprising in Maria Valtorta’s answer:
“From the very beginning of the writings, that is, in the first months of 1943, the Divine Author together with several predictions, now fulfilled […] said that he gave these writings to combat the anti-Christian doctrines which after the war would spread over the world preparing the way for the advent of communism, religious persecution and freedom of thought which God Himself respects in man, and to help men to undergo the tremendous trials of future wars, even more deadly, without their dying in despair”. (Letter to M.C. pp. 90-91). The passage continues with an account of other prophecies she communicated, and then fulfilled.
Maria Valtorta, as anticipated, first of all uses the most obvious proof: an absolutely good and useful argument for the simple reason that the free future – not obligated by anything – only God can know and reveal it; neither angels nor demons can know it; men can partially “guess” it. Certainly in those years there were so many discussions, and so many different predictions. If then anyone had hoped that things would turn out as they actually did, this depended solely on their own desires or on some human reasoning: never could they have been certain that they would come to pass as eventually happened. Everyone, that is, was rightly prey only to human hope.
Instead, what makes Maria Valtorta’s answer beyond important is what she omits, namely the entire scientific part that her writings contain. Why does she omit this very important part? Because no one suspected this scientific treasure, which she herself did not know.
This eloquent omission reveals to us today what the state of understanding of the writings was then: Father Berti himself must have sensed something, but he had never explored the texts in this sense. The great commentary he would make, both to the Poem of the Man-God (from the second edition onward and up to 1993) and to the Book of Azariah (first edition, because it was then unjustly discarded and omitted), concerned only the theology. On the other hand, he was a lecturer in this subject and could well apply his knowledge here.
But still in July 1950 no one was aware of the scientific depth of the Valtortian texts; not even Maria Valtorta herself was aware of how scientific she had written. Father Migliorini, the Jesuit fathers who used the pendulum to understand the quality of the writings, the various doctors who came to her bedside, no one had understood. Not even those who came later, specialists in mediumistic (spiritist) science, Prof. Luciano Raffaele and Prof. Nicola Pende, a valiant endocrinologist (but spiritist and, unfortunately racist). All, including Msgr. Carinci, were concerned to show Maria Valtorta’s sanctity, the literary beauty of her writings, devotionalist value and personal spiritual experience, but nothing more. To reread them today, that is, after 2012, they all seem blind. Not even Father Gabriel Roschini comes out of the pattern of sanctity: he emphasizes orthodoxy – as then Blessed Father Allegra did – but nothing more. Nor did they wonder how she could have written the Work in three years and four months without ever getting it wrong, etc. etc. In their eyes it all seemed obvious and self-evident
Eng. Lavère will have the honor of having uncovered the veil; he was the first to investigate the scientific pathways that could be studied, enumerating at least 90 of them divided into 16 categories: a list that fills two pages (cf. “The Valtorta Enigma”, pp. 41-42 – Italian edition): an enormity! It astounds every time one reads.
Before, no one had understood or tried to understand. Perhaps they thought it was an invention, a fantasy of Maria Valtorta. Who knows how many errors, historical blunders, inventions and contradictions they thought there were. What mattered to them was only orthodoxy and devotionalism; therefore, they did not even bother to check the supposed errors. One can even suspect that they evaluated the texts as useful, but not true, as if it were not permissible that a woman without theological culture, lacking so much culture in secular subjects, would never make mistakes. Worse still, there was no research in this regard either, as if it was not worth investigating. What they seemed to care about was – only – Catholic orthodoxy: an unavoidable theme, a legitimate anxiety, but a limited and limiting one.
Instead, instead, instead… Heaven had descended into her room and had given an amazing gift to mankind.
We are now aware of this. It is our honor and burden to uphold Maria Valtorta and her gifts, primarily a deepened human and divine knowledge of Jesus, so that those who seek the face of God may encounter through the Valtortian writings the same Jesus and through Him the true face of God and the way to eternal Heaven.