Poem of The Man God - Publication Controversy

Publication Controversy

Maria Valtorta was at first reluctant to have her notebooks published, but based on the advice of her priest, in 1947 she agreed to their publication. The handwritten pages were typed and bound by Father Romuald Migliorini OSM and fellow Servite Father Corrado Berti, OSM.

The two priests approached their contacts at the Vatican with the typed manuscript and in February 1948 the future Cardinal Augustin Bea, S.J. who was then the confessor to Pope Pius XII, bypassed the Holy Office by facilitating a private audience for them and their Prior, Father Andrea Checchin, with the Pope. The meeting was mentioned in L'Osservatore Romano's list of audiences and thereafter Father Berti provided a signed affidavit that recorded Pope Pius XII as saying: “Publish this work as is. There is no need to give an opinion about its origin, whether it is extraordinary or not. Whoever reads it, will understand."

Apparently assuming that he had a verbal papal approval, Father Berti then approached the official hierarchy at the publishing office of the Roman Curia, where he met serious resistance and opposition. A year later, in 1949, the Holy Office condemned the work and confiscated Father Berti’s typed copy. Father Berti then returned the handwritten pages to Maria Valtorta. From the beginning, by its nature, the work generated strong emotional reactions among those who read it.

Eventually, a lay publisher, Michele Pisani, decided to publish the work in 1956, despite the opposition to it at the Holy Office. Pisani published the book in four volumes of about one thousand pages each, one volume per year through 1959. While the third volume was being published in 1958 Pope Pius XII died and was succeeded by Pope John XXIII. In 1959, when the fourth volume was being published, the Holy Office, headed by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani recommended that the work be placed on the Index of Forbidden Books and in 1959 Pope John XXIII issued a decree to that effect. It is worth noting that Cardinals Alfredo Ottaviani (who opposed Valtorta) and Augustin Bea (who supported her) continued to disagree with each other on a wide range of issues beyond Valtorta's work for a number of years thereafter.

Maria Valtorta died in 1961, feeling deeply hurt and rejected because her work remained on the Index of Forbidden Books. In 1965, the Index of Forbidden Books itself was abolished by Pope Paul VI, who had succeeded Pope John XXIII. Valtorta supporters immediately claimed that this in effect nullified the suppression of 1959 since the Index no longer existed. Those opposed to the book do not consider the abolition of the Index as a reversal of the Church’s opinion of the work. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), while acting as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote in 1985 that "the Index retains its moral force despite its dissolution." Valtorta supporters point to the fact that the long list of books on the Forbidden Index also included writings by Jean Paul Sartre, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, John Milton, John Lock, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, among others while some authors (e.g. Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler), whose views are very unacceptable to the Church, were never put on the Index. Among several noted Roman Catholic supporters, there are John Haffert (co-founder of the 25 million member Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima) and Father Vernard Poslusney (assisted with the founding and daily operations of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima).

At the moment the official position of the Catholic Church with respect to the book is less than clear. The Church does not endorse the book, although ecclesiastical officials (including then-Cardinal Ratzinger in 1985) have commented on it. The last formal action taken by an office of the Holy See with respect to the book occurred a month after Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, Secretary General of the Italian Bishops' Conference, wrote in May 1992 to the publisher Emilio Pisani, requesting that a paragraph be added to the first few pages of the book disclaiming any supernatural origin for the work: in June 1992, Pisani visited the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican and stated that he had been told there that the letter indicated that the Italian Bishops' Conference saw nothing in the work that contradicts the doctrines of the Church. Some detractors claim that Tettamanzi's letter intended to classify the work as fiction. Since 1992, the Catholic Church has chosen to remain silent on its position with respect to the work.

The Poem of the Man God has, however, drawn criticism from a variety of theologians and skeptics, who claim internal inconsistencies, friction with the Holy See and theological errors of the Biblical account of the Gospel and Catholic dogma.

Regarding the issue of internal consistency and correspondence with the Gospels, Valtorta supporters point to the fact that ever since Saint Augustine of Hippo addressed the Augustinian hypothesis in the 5th Century, religious scholars have been debating issues regarding the comparison of various texts with the Gospels, at times with no clear resolution. Such debates still take place among experts even on issues regarding the Church Canons and the early Gospels themselves. Certain scripture scholars such as the Venerable Gabriele Allegra have expressed their support for the Poem of the Man God and its correspondence with the Gospel. In defense of Maria Valtorta, when providing his imprimatur for the Poem of the Man God, Bishop Roman Danylak recalled John 8:7 and referred to some of her critics as "those who want to cast stones".

In 1987, Vatican Cardinal Edouard Gagnon was persuaded to locate and evaluate the original minutes from the February 26, 1948 Papal meeting transcribed by the Vatican Recording Cardinal who accompanied Pope Pius XII. Cardinal Edouard Gagnon served as the Peritus (Expert Theologian Advisor and Consultant) during the second Vatican Council. He had a Doctorate in Theology and taught Canon law for ten years at the Grand Seminary. Shortly afterwards Cardinal Gagnon wrote from the Vatican, that Pope Pius XII's action was "the kind of official Imprimatur granted before witnesses by the Holy Father in 1948, an Official Imprimatur of the Supreme Authority of the Church". The Cardinal Gagnon letter was eventually published in a 1992 CEV periodical.