An excerpt from Voiding the Voices of Heaven

    In order to see most clearly the serious consequences of the Church’s failure to authenticate the publicly significant post-apostolic revelation of our day, we need to examine carefully one of the most incredible and shocking examples of voiding these voices of Heaven to have ever occurred in the Church, an example worse than the Church’s initial resistance to Fatima, and one, therefore, that has had, and will continue to have, even more serious consequences. The example I cite not only involves a significant and sustained attempt to destroy a revelation of unparalleled significance to the Church, but one that involves a serious and sustained challenge to the authority of the papacy itself. I believe the facts will show we have a powerful force operating within the Vatican working against the papal office with impunity.

    The Word of Jesus, quoted at the opening, is one small part of what is being recognized by esteemed Catholic authorities as the most significant post-apostolic revelation ever given to the Church.⁶ This revelation was clearly meant for public faith and had it been given its proper honor by the Holy Office it would have effected a completely different post Vatican II Church than what history has given us. This revelation, presently entitled The Poem of the Man-God in the English edition, consists of over 4,000 pages, presenting in great detail much of the life and ministry and teaching of Jesus Christ. This revelation differs significantly from other purported accounts of the Life of Christ that have arisen from vaguely defined inner locutions and visions and often written in the writer’s own words, rather than being a dictation by a Heavenly source. These other works (not to deny their divinely ordained place in the private devotion of God’s people) have often proven to be sprinkled with errors, evidencing a mixture of both the human and the divine. This revelation, however, claims (and offers mountains of evidence to substantiate it) to be literally dictated by the Lord Jesus Christ and our Holy Mother. According to Jesus Himself and revealed to Maria Valtorta (The Notebooks, 1944, p.570-571), the same was true for Mary Agreda’s City of God, but for only the instruction and teaching of the Holy Spirit. The other descriptive parts, again according to Jesus, while originally accurate, suffered severe distortion through cultural embellishments in their reconstruction after they had been destroyed at the order of one of Agreda’s "spiritual counselors."

    Extensive research into The Poem of the Man-God by respected professionals in various fields have yielded the most incredible and consistent evidence of superhuman authorship ever discovered in any work the Church has received. This massive amount of evidence for the divine origin of this work is just one element that sets this work wholly apart from every other post-apostolic revelation of this nature. This work is also unique in its particular relevance to the crisis of faith and morality in the world and the Church today, and also in the powerful form in which these matters are addressed. Concerted and sustained attempts, however, to "void" this Word of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin have been made by men in the Church even before the work was complete in 1947. In 1949, an attempt was made to physically destroy this work by Church officials, and, having failed at this, numerous attempts have since been made to discredit the work. Could that opposition have anything to do with the fact that, according to Jesus Himself, the primary purpose of that revelation was to provide further material to the Church to combat the rising tide of destructive modernistic liberal thinking in the Church? ⁷ This revelation faces head on the numerous errors of "modernism," but also confronts theological legalists in the opposing camp who were by their own extreme views fueling the modernists’ cause. As in the case of Jesus personally, it is, therefore, likely that as much opposition to this work has come from strict "traditionalists" (Pharisees) in the Church as from liberals, the modern Sadducees. The opposition, even in the early days, almost crushed the humble spirit of this holy, suffering victim soul. The rejection of this work after its completion and the attempt to destroy it certainly contributed to her failing health and eventual death. By God’s grace, the isolation she began to experience in her later years left her immune from the torments of her crucifers, and in increasing peace and joyful spiritual union with the Lord, just as the Lord had promised her years before. The opposition against this revelation and its penman has been worse than what was suffered by Mary Agreda’s City of God, (now Saint) Padre Pio, or (now Saint) Faustina’s inspired work, Divine Mercy. As in the case with Padre Pio, who was also condemned by the Holy Office, not only has Valtorta, through her work, had a tremendous spiritual impact on thousands of lives, but while in the most trying circumstances, had always manifested the highest spiritual virtues. She always humbly placed herself and her work under the guidance and eye of her respected spiritual advisor, and even requested that her name never appear on her work, a "fault" that her enemies used against the work when it first appeared! The connection between Maria Valtorta and Padre Pio, however, runs much deeper, as we will see later.

    In 1944, some three years before the work was finished, Pope Pius XII had become personally acquainted with the work, and shortly after its completion on April 28, 1947, a finished copy of the work was handed to him. Within ten months, the Pope had enthusiastically approved the work, and on February 26, 1948, in the presence of the work’s three highly respected representatives, ordered it to be published. The representatives for the work then confidently approached the Vatican Printing Office and presented it to them for publication. Here, the work was also reviewed and favorably received. (Who would even think of approaching the Vatican Printing Office with a claimed revelation in those days without an approval? Excommunication was the consequence of publishing claimed revelation without an imprimatur, according to canon law 2318.) Instead, The Poem of the Man-God, which also had been previously submitted to the Holy Office, was in 1949 blocked from publication with "a severe prohibition" and a threat that it would be placed on the "Forbidden List" if it were printed. Any excuse that the Holy Office was not aware of the Holy Father’s order given in 1948 is invalid, because no attempt was made by that Office to either validate or discount any papal order then; nor has there been any desire for that Office to fully honor the Pope’s order since the evidence became a matter of undeniable public knowledge.⁸ (Nor has this office to this date revoked its condemnation of the now —Saint Padre Pio.) Fr. Corrado M. Berti, who represented the work at the time of the blockage, was summoned before the Holy Office, refused any opportunity to speak, and was told to sign the judgment without comment and turn over all copies of Maria Valtorta’s works.⁹ This Office had absolutely no interest in hearing of any papal orders! Thankfully, all the original manuscripts were held by Maria Valtorta, or most of her work would have been destroyed!

    The "imprimatur" (actually an oral rescript which goes beyond the force of an imprimatur in that it also orders publication) was given by Pope Pius XII, as mentioned, in the presence of three credible and highly respected witnesses,¹⁰ and was in that day completely valid and according to canon law. Indeed, no less a personage than Edouard Cardinal Gagon, though no supporter of The Poem, writing to the Maria Valtorta Research Center from the Vatican on October 31, 1987, referred to Pope Pius XII’s action as: "the kind of official Imprimatur granted before witnesses by the Holy Father in 1948." Although no imprimatur is required today for the publishing of revelations, apparitions, miracles etc., that "rescript," the papal order for the publication of The Poem, still stands. Concerning his own confidence in the divine origin of Valtorta’s work, Pope Pius XII, on February 26, 1948, had stated the work should be published "just as it is," without any further statement as to its divine origin (its divine origin was already emphatically claimed throughout the work), because, he said, "whoever reads it will understand." Though these witnesses never claimed the Pope actually stated the work "was of God," if he had not believed this work to be so, he would have had to conclude the author was either insanely deluded or a pathological liar, because Valtorta insisted the work as a divine dictation throughout the work. For that reason alone, had Pope Pius XII not been fully convinced it was of God, he would not have approved the work or ordered it to be published. Certainly, no Pope would have so strongly approved a book, let alone one that claims to be divinely dictated revelation, if he thought there were any chance the author was insanely deluded or a liar!

    However, not only was this work blocked from publication, but, as mentioned, not a single word of defense for the work was allowed to be given before the Holy Office. For several years, attempts to gain both a hearing and a meeting with the Pope to address the matter were blocked by influences in the Vatican, though the failing health of the Pope may have explained some of this difficulty. In 1956, being finally compelled morally to obey the higher authority of a papal order, even without the difficulty with the Holy Office officially settled, those representing the work finally had the work printed. (Who would have dared to defy the Holy Office without the direct authority of the Pope? This would have been a double cause for excommunication.) After the work had been on the market for three years (and a year after Pope Pius XII died), the Holy Office suddenly, as they had previously threatened to do, placed the work on its "Forbidden List." For what reason? Because it contained teachings that were theological or morally incorrect? Not at all. The work has never been formally charged with theological or moral error, though utterly unfounded insinuations were later made in 1985 by the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith, which by that time had replaced "The Holy Office." Informally, someone at the Holy Office had claimed the work to possibly contain descriptions of evil that might not be suitable for the ill-prepared. The work was not accused of condoning or even being lenient toward sin or false doctrine. Indeed, there has not even been to this date an official investigation of the work! However, after ridiculing the work on a number of weightless, sometimes outright foolish points, like being a poorly written novel and containing "exegetical errors," the work (the first edition!) was banned because of a charge of a "serious act of disobedience" on the part of those who had proceeded to published it in defiance of the Holy Office’s original blockage. The charge, of course, was true but morally inexcusable in light of the indifference shown from as early as 1948 in determining the actual ecclesiastical status of the work when there was good reason to believe that such approval had been granted. That this office had good reason to believe they were in conflict with the papacy is supported by the fact that the meeting with the Pope in 1948 had been immediately made a matter of public record and that not one word of defense or explanation was allowed Fr. Corrado Berti. He was merely told of the blockage, the threat of condemnation, and was ordered to turn over all manuscripts. Berti only turned over the typed copies of the manuscripts in his possession, leaving the originals in the hands of Maria Valtorta.

    To their great advantage in 1960 (after the work "in disobedience" was published and had been on the market for three years), was the succession to the papacy of John XXIII. Pope John XXII seemed to have no limit on who he trusted and was notorious for signing documents handed to him without looking at them. The Holy Office now decides to approach the papacy. "Disobedience" was the only valid reason that could be found to once again try to destroy this work –until 1966, when the "Index of Forbidden Books" was abolished by Pope Paul VI. Interestingly enough, according to Msgr. Pasquale Macchi, Pope Paul VI’s private secretary, the Pope had personally read one volume of the work when he was Archbishop of Milan and was so moved by it that he personally ordered a complete set and sent it to the Seminary of Milan.¹⁹ Though it cannot be documented, many feel Pope Paul VI’s enthusiasm for The Poem of the Man-God led directly to his abolishing the Forbidden List created by the Holy Office, as well as limiting that office’s authority in censuring "private revelation" to only cases of material that was material contrary to Catholic faith or morals.

    This order nullified the "forbidden" status of that first edition of The Poem that Pope John XXIII had signed. Of course, the record of Pope John XXIII’s approval in 1960 of the Holy Office’s condemnation for "disobedience" still remains, and thus the issue of "disobedience" remains in the minds of those who still wish to deny the testimony of three credible witnesses whose testimony would have been recognized in any court of law as valid. This condemnation, moreover, neither says anything about the editions now being published, nor does it have any continuing moral significance unless one still wishes to believe that a book should be punished because of what its handlers allegedly did or did not do with its first edition! In fact concerning the second edition which now included notes explaining some of the areas that had been open to possible misinterpretation Fr. Marco Giraudo, O.P. Commissioner of the Holy Office in 1961 said to Fr. Berti, who represented the work, "You have our complete approval to continue the publication of this second edition of Maria Valtorta’s Poem of the Man-God." The Poem thus stood for 26 years (between 1966 to 1992) on the very same ground as any other "so called ‘private’ revelation" that was free of any formal charge of moral or theological error. It was free to be published and free to be read by all Catholics, who were also allowed by canon law to make their own determination as to its divine origin. In 1992 the work was again affirmed as readable material by all, by Archbishop Tettamanzi, in his capacity of Secretary General of the Italian Bishop’s Conference (and at the request of the CDF) showing it was free of moral and theological error. Despite these plain facts, there have been some good, loyal church men who have spread around the distortions and outright libelous charges of its enemies (passed on by the CDF itself in 1985) with fanatical passion. Clearly, for these men, maintaining public confidence in the Holy Office and the CDF has taken precedence over any interest in determining whether we have here yet another serious travesty of justice being perpetrated against yet another soul victim, and against what could be the most significant revelation from Heaven ever given to the Church since the Apostles.

    Today, the work, translated in some ten languages, has gained worldwide popularity and been given the highest praises by some of the Church’s most respected authorities. That includes the word of at least two of the visionaries of Medjugorje, that the Blessed Mother herself said the work was "All true! Dictated by Jesus!"¹¹ Knowing that falsely charging the work with moral or theological error would require some kind of explanation for the charge, the CDF has finally admitted there is no reason the work cannot be published "without alteration" and read by all, just as Pope Pius XII originally said should have been done in 1948. This position is, finally, an official admission by the CDF (through Archbishop Tettamanzi) that the work is free of theological and moral error. That should have ended all controversy over this work because determining whether a work is morally or theologically sound is the only authority the CDF has had since Pope Paul VI issued his order limiting the power of that office. The position of the Church since Pope Paul VI in 1966 abolished canons 1399 and 2318, allowing publications of apparitions, revelations, miracles, etc., without the approval of the Church (the CDF), was to allow the reader to judge for himself all purported revelations unless they were formally charged with moral or theological error. However, the CDF chose in that very same letter to challenge Pope Paul VI’s restriction on the power of its office by continuing opposition to The Poem on grounds now clearly outside its authority. The CDF, while forced to formally approve the publication and the reading of this work without alteration, attempts to discredit the work by striking a blow at the character of its author! It’s an old trick. If you cannot win on the issues, discredit your opponent’s point by attacking his character. In the same letter came the order ("request") from the CDF requiring the publisher of The Poem to, in effect, discredit the character and integrity of Maria Valtorta by denying the supernatural origin of the work!

    Yes, in what would be a front page qualifier for a Ripley’s Believe- it-or-Not, in that May 6, 1992 letter from Archbishop Dionigi Tettamanzi approving publication and unrestricted reading by all Catholics, the publisher of The Poem of the Man-God was ordered ("requested") that he must state and that all readers must agree "that the ‘visions’ and ‘dictations’ related therein may not be considered to possess a supernatural origin [neither of God or Satan], but must simply be deemed literary forms of which the author has made use to narrate the life of Jesus in her own way."¹² Of course, not a single reason was given to justify this absolutely unprecedented and illicit order against a "private revelation" that has been at the same time cleared of any charge of theological or moral error. Not only does canon law give the exclusive right of determining authenticity to every reader in such revelations, but even a casual reading of the work could lead one to no other conclusion than that Maria Valtorta could never have written this work without an abundance of supernatural help. The only words I can think of to describe this latest attempt to discredit this work and its deceased and saintly penman, beyond "despicable," is "low," "cheap" and "cowardly." But if an offense against yet another soul-victim and thus against God were not enough, this unprecedented order strikes at yet another papal order in addition to the orders of Pope Paul VI denying this kind of authority to the CDF. There is now disregard for Pope Pius XII’s order to publish the work "without a statement regarding its origin," because, he explained, "he who reads will understand." The CDF thus continues to contradict Pope Pius XII’s views of this work as being divine, and does so in a way that violates his stated order not to make a further statement concerning its origin.

    This action of the CDF, therefore, violates the spirit and intent of the order of Pope Paul VI, as well as the orders of Pope Pius XII. This problem, first in the Holy Office and now continuing in the CDF, is an intolerable situation which overturns the hierarchal structure of the Church and is in clear violation of canon Law, which outlaws any reversal of the Supreme Head of the Church by a subsidiary Vatican Congregation, or even by appeal to an Ecumenical Council.¹³ The now quite apparent war between papal authority and the powers behind the Holy Office, and now the CDF, continues to this day, even in respect to its persecution of Padre Pio. Pope John Paul II can declare Padre Pio "Blessed" and then a Saint, yet the Holy Office who condemned him still has not revoked the decrees emitted against him or admitted its misjudgment! As I mentioned previously, however, Padre Pio’s connection to Maria Valtorta goes much deeper than being fellow victim souls of irresponsible Church leaders. Padre Pio had the highest regard for The Poem of the Man-God and is quoted telling a close devotee of his, when she asked if he advised her to read the work, "I don’t advise you to – I order you to!"²² So the plot only thickens as men in places of authority, either out of an appalling incompetence or cowardice, or some desire for political advantage, or perhaps even out of a fully conscious malevolence toward the light of God, continue to do the work of Satan.

    Since Maria Valtorta resolutely and repeatedly affirms that her work was a word-for-word dictation from Jesus Christ and His Mother, and her own descriptions and observations were from the most vivid of real life visions where she could not only see and hear but even smell everything before her, she, according to the CDF, must be considered by all Catholics to be either insanely deluded or a plain liar. What we have here, without having to judge the motives of any known individual in the CDF, is an unparalleled opposition, for a reason clearly outside its jurisdiction, to a revelation that some with the highest authority in the Church, including a Pope and the Holy Mother herself, through two visionaries, is saying is of unparalleled and unequaled significance to the Church, and of unmistakable divine origin! ⁶

    On top of this, we have priests, representatives of Christ Himself, who can criticize this work on purely hearsay information, apparently in the belief the CDF can do no wrong, even if that view means disdain for the orders of two Popes and disdain for a third, who has now exonerated two whom the Holy Office had condemned. One of these priests did so publicly on an international Catholic television network. This priest has reportedly admitted to having never read the work, a fact, however, one can gather simply reading the expose he left for download on the internet. I cannot believe he or others guilty of such serious improprieties have even taken the time to look at the easily accessible defense (also on the internet) this work has already received. Such information would have demanded, at the very least, a great deal of caution. Why on earth the continued opposition to a work that is now admittedly theologically and morally sound, and has as its avid supporters a whole list of highly ranked churchmen? This work would certainly be feared by liberals because it provides unmistakable and undeniable evidence for the authenticity of the entire body of Catholic faith, including issues now hotly contested by them within the Church. The work would also be feared by those blindly loyal to the present hierarchal authority structure in the Church, because the self-authenticating nature of this work will prove the Holy Office and the CDF have not only made a whole series of extremely serious errors, but are guilty of glaring distortion and calumny. Besides exposing the spiritual corruption in the Temple of God from both the right and the left, this work will overthrow the long standing paradigm commonly accepted among conservatives and traditionalists that there cannot be new "public" revelation required for the faith of the Church. That thought alone of opening a door to any further authoritative source of divine light could be terrifying to those who see this as one more door and license for free thinkers to introduce heresy and division into the Church. Fear of their loss of control over the faith of the Church appears very real to those who have closed themselves off to the Holy Spirit by assuming too much of the His office as Defender of the Faith. The Disciples of Jesus, in the middle of the storm-tossed Sea of Galilee at night, with a similar faulty confidence in the providence of God, found their fears also heightened seeing what only later they recognized to be Jesus. All fear vanished, however, when they heard His voice and knew for certain it was Jesus. For those who truly love the Lord Jesus, the Church and the Holy Tradition of the Catholic faith from a truly divine perspective, the cure for all fear over The Poem of the Man-God is simply, read the work!!

    While the CDF, stepping outside its own legal jurisdiction, can tramp on papal authority to suppress and discredit a revelation that admittedly is free of theological or moral error, it can completely ignore very well known purported revelations that do conflict with Catholic faith which have been published, circulated and read by Catholics for years. These revelations, of the most questionable origin and compiled not by the visionary herself, contain obvious false and harmful teachings, such as ascribing the origin of the color (even the degree of shade of color of each individual) of the Negro race to the degree of sin into which these people allegedly fell. Unless the CDF is willing to say this teaching on the origin of the black race is consistent with Catholic faith, these materials need to be disclaimed. I am referring to what were clearly "private revelations" ascribed to Catherine Emmerich, which admittedly included many things that came to her as a child, and perhaps included prejudices and notions that were mixed in by compilers with whatever may have been authentically revealed to her. ¹⁴

    I believe that this unprecedented ruling against The Poem in 1992, and the previous outright and vicious falsehoods spread about this holy work of God by the CDF in 1985, reportedly under the signature of no less than Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger himself,²⁵ will be the rope by which the Evil One and the true betrayers of Christ behind all this confusion and fear in the Vatican will finally hang themselves and by which their stranglehold in the Church will be overthrown. Not only was this 1992 ruling based on charges that were patently false and villainous, but this ruling (however subtly) strikes at the authority of the papacy, and thus directly against Jesus Christ Himself. Incredibly, this ruling also exposes as hypocritical the prevailing view of those in officialdom that not even the Bishops, in union with the Pope, are capable of determining the origin of a "private revelation." Magisterial authority, as we have pointed out, is claimed to extend only to determining whether such revelation is consistent with Catholic theology and moral teaching. While even revelations as significant as Fatima are claimed to be beyond the discernment of the magisterial authority, all of a sudden, in the case of The Poem of the Man-God, free of any theological or moral error, a mere agency of the Vatican, claims to know with certainty this revelation is not of God and attempts to force Catholics to submit to their view! This has been done without even a formal hearing or an official investigation of the work! There is a striking parallel in the Gospels to this hypocrisy and affront to Church law. The Pharisees (the Jewish traditionalists), wanting to kill Jesus, while claiming they could not tell if God had called John the Baptist, claimed to know for sure that Jesus was not of God, and they also required the Jewish people to submit to that view. Neither were their verdicts against Jesus reached in a fair and open manner where the Accused was given fair opportunity to defend Himself. Arrogance, falsehood and hypocrisy moving in darkened secrecy and illegality characterized Jesus’ enemies. The case of The Poem of the Man-God reveals this same triple sign of Anti-Christ, which is both an echo of the previous betrayal of the incarnate Christ and a foreshadow of the final betrayal of Christ in His Vicar and in the Church.

    What the CDF claims The Poem of the Man-God to be, a mere human creation (which assassinates the character of its author), is the one thing it cannot be. No human being, or any group of human beings, could have put together the kind of information we see in such abundance in The Poem with such detail, consistency and accuracy. There is information throughout The Poem that could only have been known by a much later generation using computer programs of planetary positioning and lunar phases. This information has made the dating of every episode of this work possible, and for most this provides the very day on which the episode took place! To put it simply, if The Poem is not the supernatural work of Heaven, then neither is the Church, the Bible or Jesus Christ.

    Personally, without The Poem of the Man-God, neither I nor my family would be in the Catholic Church today. That work is clearly the most powerful and incontrovertible testimony to the truthfulness and reliability of the Sacred Scripture and the absolute truth of the Catholic Faith to have been given to the Church in its 2,000 year history. It is clearly the most powerful testimony the Church has ever received against the ravaging errors of modernism, liberalism, and moral relativism in our day, as well as the errors of the extreme traditionalists in the Church who are challenging the ecumenical spirit and the overtures of our Holy Father toward Protestants, Jews and Moslems. If, indeed, the Word of God is "living and effectual, and more piercing than any two edged sword . . . and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," then we have in The Poem that Word in the most powerful and complete form I have seen anywhere in the Church. No one is claiming that The Poem can replace the Gospels or would even hold a place of significance in the Church without that ancient, but much less complete, record of Sacred Scripture. The ancient Gospel accounts establish the underlying certainty of the life and teachings of Christ and the Church. Precisely because The Poem contains such an astonishing amount of authenticating evidence of its supernatural origin, its affirmation of the O.T. and the N.T. records and Holy Catholic Tradition is extremely significant in our day when so much of Scripture and Holy Tradition is being questioned. The Poem verifies every significant element of Catholic faith that has become seriously muddled in the quagmire of today’s rampant materialism, sensuality, rationalism and egoism. The potential for this work playing a major role in the renewal of the Church is absolutely unquestionable. I have read all five volumes five times, and can tell you that one would not even have to have one bit of spiritual discernment to see that no human mind or any group of human minds could have written these volumes within anyone’s lifetime, let alone in the 3½ years it took Maria Valtorta, confined to a sick bed, to write it.

    Here are a few examples of the many lines of incontrovertible evidences for the supernatural origin of this work that should be understandable even for those with no spiritual discernment. This work consists of 647 Gospel episodes recorded within a 3½ year period (1944 to 1947), not in chronological order, but often according to the visionary’s own personal spiritual needs and in conjunction with the events of the Church calendar. We know this not only from the original copies that were all dated, but because Maria Valtorta shows lack of familiarity with persons and places in later episodes of Christ’s life, whereas in the earlier ones she shows a great deal of familiarity. We have here an astonishing 20,000 handwritten pages from her (10,000 for The Poem), written in mixed order (and with hardly a correction), that, when assembled at Jesus’ instruction in proper sequence, present a perfectly flowing story with not one person, place or thing out of place. Even the best novelists, who develop their work in sequence with far shorter, far less involved story lines and far fewer characters (The Poem presents over 500 personalities!), have often been caught with irregularities in these matters. Not so with Maria Valtorta and the Poem of the Man-God.

    This has all been accomplished while incorporating in its body and expanding upon nearly the entire content of all four Gospel accounts. Only 6 short Gospel texts have not been found in the body of this work. In addition to this we also discover an astonishing 950 quotations and references from some 40 books of the Old Testament, many of which are found in Jesus’ many teachings and sermons.¹⁵ It would have taken a special team of Old Testament biblical scholars to incorporate this many Old Testament Scriptures into any kind of series of teaching and preaching, let alone one that had to fit the particular settings carefully described in The Poem. These elements alone make the thought of human authorship absurd.

    An additional line of incontrovertible evidence (which Valtorta was encouraged by Jesus to include for the benefit of "the difficult doctors" of the Church) deals with the vast amount of geographical, climatic, agricultural, historical, astronomical and cartographical information given in her work. Authorities in these fields have verified the accuracy of what she has reported with appropriate astonishment. Valtorta accurately identifies this agricultural and climactic information that is often unique to Palestine with the appropriate calendar period which she often specifically identifies. Without any evidence of planning and with hardly any corrections, Valtorta ends up with a perfectly flowing 3½ year story line with Jesus appropriately in Jerusalem and Judea for Passover and Pentecost in all four spring seasons, and at the Tabernacles in all three fall seasons of His ministry. Valtorta shows Jesus to have traversed the land of Palestine from one end to another in at least six cycles (some 4,000 miles), ministering in some 350 named locations, including places in Palestine known only to specialized archaeologists. Not once, however, does she have Jesus (or anyone of the other 500 characters) in a place inconsistent with either the story line or distance or timing necessities.¹⁶

    For this work to be of human origin would have also required, in addition to numerous technical resources in several fields, the use of a pre-existing harmony of the Gospels, the four Gospels arranged both in parallel and in an acceptable chronological order. No one could have written a work that includes the entire content of all four Gospels without such a harmony without missing significant material, adding material contradictory to an overlooked parallel account, or duplicating accounts, mistaking some parallel accounts for more than one event. The Poem, however, while maintaining absolute integrity in all these areas, follows an altogether different arrangement than any previous harmony. Previous harmonies cluster all the ministry events of Christ into a single Judean, Galilean and Perean ministry. The Poem has six distinct Judean ministries with excursions into Perea and Samaria, with all but the first centered around the Passover or Tabernacles when Jesus would naturally have been in Judea. It has six distinct Galilean ministries with excursions into Syro-Phoenicia and Decapolis, always between these two feasts. Though this is an altogether new arrangement, those few events in the Gospels identified by scholars as belonging to specific calendar, seasonal periods or geographical locations are all correctly placed. In respect to the great many Gospel events whose calendar or seasonal placement could not be determined from the biblical data, we find an incredible number of differences in sequence in The Poem compared to other harmonies, all of which rearrangements would have been completely unnecessary if the only purpose were to create an acceptable fictional account of the life of Christ. Of the 269 New Testament Gospel episodes occurring in the three full years of Christ’s ministry according to a standard arrangement, over half of them (146) are located differently in The Poem, and of these, 92 of them are placed in an altogether different ministry year. The lack of necessity for any rearrangement and the utter complexity involved in such a vast number of rearrangements rules out any reasonable possibility of human authorship on this one account alone.

    Valtorta’s numerous descriptions of moon phases, planets and constellations, their positions in the night sky, her continual noting of the time of year, seasons, months, climate, Sabbath days and feast days (though never claiming these to be without possible misjudgment), are so precise that every one of her 647 episodes have been dated using the ancient Jewish calendar of that day and computer programs of the heavens for that period of time. This has resulted in the untangling of every one of those 269 New Testament Gospel episodes from the chronological disorder we find then in the New Testament, and their fitting into a perfectly flowing and consistent story line that includes fully developed and continually intersecting accounts of over 500 persons with no contradictions or irregularities. What is now being determined is how this calendar sequence relates to our Gregorian calendar. From the preliminary research done by Thomas Dube of Washington State it seems that the Church may have been correct in assigning the date of the Birth of Christ to late December of 1 BC!

    Also supporting The Poem’s claim of divine origin are the solutions it presents to problems in the Gospel accounts which scholars have struggled with for years. I offer four examples. Certain elements of the Resurrection story have frustrated scholars for centuries. Obviously, for the Gospel writers, the actual account was unnecessarily complicated for their purposes, so they simplified their accounts by telling only part of the story, or, as Matthew did, by blending the accounts. What is most obvious from the Gospels in this story is also what has up to now been so unexplainable and, frankly, almost impossible to believe. How could at least three groups of women separately visit and expect entrance to a sealed and guarded tomb in the darkness of an early dawn? No one has been able to explain how this could have happened. That is a real predicament, especially because it involves testimony to the most important event of Christian faith. The account in The Poem not only untangles the five visits to the tomb (the first three groups of women, with the Magdalene visiting twice, and then the one later group), but explains very simply why the first three groups of women quite unintentionally ended up visiting the tomb separately, and why from the outset they, all together (with Mary Magdalene), were confident they could gain access to a sealed and guarded tomb.

    The Gospel account of the story of the crowing of the cock after Peter’s denials has presented an equally challenging problem for those who have maintained the integrity of Scripture. Critics have, for centuries, pointed to this account as undeniable proof of error, and no biblical scholar has ever been able to satisfactorily explain the apparent discrepancies. The account in The Poem solves this age old problem by supplying the missing information, the lack of which only made the Scripture account appear to be contradictory. The Poem also offers clear evidence that could also settle the debate over the authorship of Hebrews and the important and logical reason this work was attributed to Paul, though language style shows he was not, at least, the primary author. The Poem gives evidence that none other than Gamaliel was its primary author. A most fascinating theme in The Poem is Gamaliel’s spiritual journey to Christian faith. Gamaliel, who had always shown the highest respect for Jesus, becomes a firm believer in Christ at the Crucifixion, though he does not openly identify with the Church in Christian baptism until near his death. Besides its lofty Hebrew style the major clue that points to Gamaliel as the author is that Valtorta reports seeing Gamaliel with a wax tablet and parchment recording the discourse of Jesus in the temple that contains a whole series of thoughts and themes found in Hebrews. (Compare pages 465-468 of Volume IV of The Poem to Hebrews 1:5,6,13,14; 2:5,11,14-17; 7:2,3,11-13,15-17; 9:11,12; 10:9,10.) If this was the origin of Hebrews, then it would have been circulating long before the Gospels were compiled. That could first of all explain why this very important discourse of Jesus was not included in any of the four Gospels. And, if Gamaliel was the author, it would only be logical that he, not wishing at the time to openly identify with the Church, would have given this work to his former student Paul, who had also been converted, to disseminate it.

    Perhaps the most striking example of divine authorship I discovered while puzzling over a four and a half month ministry in Galilee which was detailed in over 330 pages of The Poem but completely missing in the New Testament Gospels. While working on a parallel harmony of the four Gospels according to The Poem, I discovered, to my amazement, evidence substantiating this very missing ministry, hidden in one single verse in Luke. It was the sixth Galilean ministry, according to The Poem, that was completely missing from the Gospels. That text (Luke 17:11) comes right at the proper place at the tail end of what The Poem describes as the fifth ministry cycle. Luke admits at this very point skipping over a ministry in Galilee and Samaria. That this verse was placed into sacred Scripture could only have been for one reason, to help authenticate a revelation God knew He would give us in the 20^th century! Luke 17:11 serves no other purpose. The Poem also clarifies the meaning of Luke’s rather strange statement in the same verse that Jesus, throughout that 4½ month ministry in the north of Palestine, is actually "going to Jerusalem!" Going through Samaria and Galilee is certainly a strange way to go to Jerusalem! But, once again, the narrative in The Poem describing this ministry in Galilee and Samaria shows us why Luke said what he did. Jesus was in this ministry anticipating his final trip to Jerusalem for His Passion and Crucifixion. Everywhere He went we see Him in The Poem bidding farewell. I could cite many other examples, of the Poem’s attention to such detail but this should be sufficient evidence that we are dealing here with a most extraordinary treasure of unmistakable divine origin. The greatest evidence of its divine origin, however, is in its profound purity and holiness, its depth of spiritual wisdom and insight. In this it is unparalleled.

    While Maria Valtorta obviously had a very gifted mind with some real literary skill, she was only of average education and was confined to her bed the entire time she wrote and until her death in1961. She had access only to her Bible and Catechism. She often had no way to even access her own previous writings. Fatima and the dancing sun seen by 70,000 is nothing compared to the evidence of the divine hand in this revelation. The evidence here does not depend on the witness of others. The evidence here will not fade with time. It is inscribed in black and white on every one of over 4,000 pages, waiting for anyone interested enough to look at it honestly. Those willing to do that have done so in increasing numbers and in increasing conviction of the significance of Maria Valtorta and her works. So it has been that despite the serious maligning of her character and her writing from the highest office in the Vatican, outside of the Pope and the Secretary of State, the massive effort to begin her beautification process has now been completed.

    But as someone has said, you cannot win arguing with the Devil regardless of the evidence presented. Apparently, too much evidence can be as bad as too little! One of the serious criticisms leveled against this work’s claim to be of God was that it describes a Mariology and a Christology in terms that only "modern theologians" would use! Is it possible there are those in the Church who could believe that our modern theologians have transcended the wisdom, theological and literary skill of Jesus Christ Himself? Heaven forbid the thought that Jesus Christ of the first century could equal our modern theologians in their theologizing! There appears to be many in our day who cannot imagine any generation before them as intellectually advanced as their own. Beyond this, there are those who would also deny Jesus Christ any right to contemporize his first century language for us, if indeed that is what He did. Our biblical scholars, linguists and our priests can take the greatest liberties in contemporizing the first century message of the Word and express their own opinions as to what Jesus said to His first century audience in today’s language, but yet these would deny the Word Himself that same right? I do not know about you, but I can hear the hiss and rattle of a serpent under this, and all the other cold hard rocks that human pride and arrogance have thrown against this work, every one of which are hiding a very certain but subtle hatred for Jesus Christ and His Word. One day, this whole rock pile of human resistance to God within the Church that has too long been crushing the life out of the people of God will be consumed with an unquenchable fire. Woe be to those who have filled their own heads and hearts with such rocks!