ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 6, 2025 /
14:35 pm
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said that messages contained in the writings of Maria Valtorta (1897–1961), an Italian Catholic mystic, “cannot be considered to be of supernatural origin.”
In a press release dated Feb. 22, the Vatican dicastery noted that the Holy See “frequently receives requests from both clergy and laypeople for clarification on the Church’s position” regarding Valtorta’s writings.
The author, who remained bedridden for more than 30 years following an incident, claimed to have received visions and revelations from Jesus and the Virgin Mary, which she related in extensive writings about the life of Christ, including details that do not appear in the canonical Gospels.
Among her works, the most notable is “Il Poema dell’Uomo Dio” (“The Poem of the Man-God”), today known as “L’Evangelo Come Mi è Stato Rivelato” (“The Gospel as Revealed to Me”), which is 13,000 pages long.
Despite its international success and the support of Pope Pius XII, the work was included in the Index of Prohibited Books in 1959 along with other publications classified by the Catholic Church as heretical, immoral, or harmful to the faith. The index was abolished in 1966.
In this context, the Vatican reiterated that the alleged “visions,” “revelations,” and “messages” contained in Valtorta’s writings, or attributed to her, are simply “literary forms that the author used to narrate the life of Jesus Christ in her own way.”
To justify its position, the dicastery clarified that “in its long tradition, the Church does not accept as normative the Apocryphal Gospels and other similar texts since it does not recognize them as divinely inspired. Instead, the Church refers back to the sure reading of the inspired Gospels.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Almudena Martínez-Bordiú is Rome correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN.
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