Maria Valtorta - Settling in Viareggio

Settling in Viareggio

In 1924, her family moved from Florence to settle in the nearby town of Viareggio, on the coast of Tuscany. After settling in Viareggio, she hardly ever left that town. In Viareggio Maria led a life dominated by solitude and except for occasional excursions to the seaside and the pine-forest, her days mostly consisted of doing the daily household shopping and visiting the Church for the Blessed Sacrament.

Early in 1925, when she was 27 years old, she read the autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul in one sitting and it made a lasting impression on her. Influenced by the autobiography of Thérèse, on January 28th 1925 (several years before becoming bedridden) she made a vow to offer herself to God as a victim soul, and to renew that offer to God every day. Later, in 1943, after reading about the life of Saint John Vianney she wrote that she also considered him a victim soul. In 1931 she took private vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.

January 4, 1933 was the last day on which Maria was able to leave her house on her own, despite a high level of fatigue. From 1 April 1934, she was no longer able to leave her bed. In 1935, a year after she was bed-ridden, Martha Diciotti began to care for her. Maria's father died in 1935, and her mother in 1943, after which she was mostly alone in the house, with Martha Diciotti taking care of her to the end of her life. Except for a brief wartime evacuation to Sant’ Andrea di Compito in Lucca, from April to December 1944 during the Second World War, the rest of her life was spent in her bed at 257 Via Antonio Fratti in Viareggio.

In 1942 Valtorta was visited by Fr. Romuald M. Migliorini of the Servants of Mary, who became her spiritual director. As a missionary priest, Father Migliorini had previously been the Vicar Apostolic in Swaziland, Africa. Early in 1943, when Maria had been infirm for nine years, Father Migliorini, suggested to her to frankly write about her life, and in about two months she had produced several hundred handwritten pages for her confessor, and it became the basis of her autobiography.