Authors From Italy

"In fact, precisely in this is the God in which the Christian believes "different" from any other: in the fact, that is, that he proposes faith to men (which is, at the same time, experience ' 'and hope, use of reason and adherence to revelation, even in what that reason surpasses); which does not require adherence to evidence (in which one must necessarily "believe" and demand to be verified, under penalty of unreasonableness). [...] Only a God who proposes himself with signs, clues, traces, imprints and who does not impose himself, appearing dazzling in his glory, can establish a free and not a necessary dependency. (pp. 78-79)"

"Why is the Madonna appearing? Why didn't Jesus himself or any canonized saint appear in Lourdes (as in rue du Bac, La Salette, Pontmain, Beauraing, Fatima, to name just the last century and a half and facts approved by the Church)? But it is because – answers the theology, meditated by mystics –, according to the Catholic Creed «the Immaculate Mother of God, always Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed into celestial glory in body and soul» . Thus, the words of the dogma of the Assumption, defined and proclaimed by Pius XII only in C.E.1950 but believed in its object since the times of the Fathers of the Church both in the East and in the West (the feast of the Dormition, which has in nuce the Assumption of the Virgin Mother, it is probably the most ancient of the Marian feasts that unite the universal Church). Mary, in short, having carried in her womb the One who said: «I am the resurrection and life" (Jn 11, 25), followed the Son in his eternal destiny before any other human creature; she is the one who preceded us all, already welcomed into eternity "in body and soul". Therefore, if she appears to mortals, it is also to remember that what she already is, we too will be. Her sign and pledge, in short, in the person of herself, of that salvation we were talking about and that she will give us true health: the vision of Mary's body already "saved" is a guarantee that everyone's will be. (pp. 61-62)"

"Unique among religions, Christianity not only announces the salvation of the soul, the survival of the "spirit", but also the resurrection of the flesh. It too is destined - albeit mysteriously transfigured - to live in eternity: it is also to show this that the risen Jesus, the model and foretaste of every man's resurrection, asks for something to eat and sits at the table again with the disciples. (pp. 59-60)"

"All those who were physically healed in Lourdes have died or will die, even if for evils other than those for which they turned to Mary's intercession. [...] It is an obvious reflection, perhaps apparently banal. Yet, it allows us to clarify the Catholic's perspective in the face of the impressive dossier of "physical" healings which, at the foot of the Pyrenees, have not ceased to occur since C.E.1858. The believer, that is, knows that what is promised by the Gospel - what 'everyone' is promised - it is indeed the radical and definitive "healing" of the body too; but only when this is resurrected to eternal life. (p. 59)"

"Lourdes – if believers are right – is a glimpse suddenly opened onto an Other World; it is the truth entrusted not to professors and experts, but to the illiterate; it is Heaven itself that ratifies the dogmas of a Pope, moreover "obscurantist" and "reactionary" like Pius IX: it is the mocked Catholic Mariology that has full confirmation; it is the blind who regains his sight, the cancerous person who heals, the paralytic who walks. Lourdes is – and cannot help but be – the scandal, the division, the denial of the common sense imposed by the new conformism. She has therefore not ceased her provocative role; nor, for that matter, will she ever be able to stop it. (p. 47)"

"For Christianity the fundamental attitude is the transformation of the world and reality. The achievement through history of the "Kingdom of God". And in this sense the evangelical message is profoundly revolutionary, it truly aims to "know reality in order to transform it", according to the slogan that Marx borrowed from the best Jewish-Christian tradition. (chap. IX)"

"One day they asked Sigmund Freud to summarize his "recipe" to defend man from the dark evils that emerge from the depths. «Lieben und arbeiten, to love and work» was the response of the founder of psychoanalysis. It is, coincidentally, the same formula proposed to man by the New Testament, which he places at the center of his love and work message. Less known, perhaps, is this second aspect, so much so that the phrase of Saint Paul in the second letter to the Thessalonians ("Whoever does not want to work, let him not eat) is often attributed to [[Lenin] ]. Incorrect attribution but, we believe, highly significant. (chap. VIII)"

"anti-Semitism is unfortunately almost as old as the Jews and, as has been observed, arises precisely from amazement and anger towards this people who are unable to dissolve into others, to assimilate. Not with threats and not even, note, with flattery. The renegade Jew who accepted the gospel in Christian countries was removed from a subhuman condition to receive the fullness of rights and, sometimes, honors and riches. Yet, conversion was so rare that in medieval Nordic Europe one could even promise the renegade a barony or a county. The Muslims converted Christians by the millions and erased faith in Jesus from entire countries but they failed to convert the Jews. (chapter III)"

"Simone Weil, the Jew educated in agnosticism, also reacted in the name of reason to man's instinctive and recurrent protest for the lack of divine evidence. (chap. II)"

"God, if he exists, is hidden. If he exists, men have always been forced to grope for him. And their research does not always have an outcome or a result. Whether positive or negative. One should wonder and be wary of those who claim they have no difficulty believing. Perhaps (as has been said) it is because they have not quite understood what it is about. The despairing human experience is that no divinity peeks out from behind the clouds. Heaven and earth are silent. But, if a god exists, he is not only hidden behind the silence of nature. He also hides behind the reality of the evil of the innocent which seems to accuse him without the possibility of defence; behind the multiplicity of religions. In these, behind the difficulties of the many "sacred writings", including the Bible. If it exists, it is also hidden behind the scandals of the churches; behind the errors and inconsistencies of those precisely who should testify to their existence with life itself. (I understood)"

"Talking about yourself is irritating and risky. If I dare to do so it is because I would like to reassure the reader: I started from doubt; or rather by indifference. Like him, like many today. Certainly not from faith. I came to these studies after 18 years of state school. I had to learn everything, starting from nothing. At school, the only priests for me were therefore those of the "religion hours" imposed by the conciliation with the fascists. Then, suddenly, an increasingly exciting treasure hunt began in first century Palestine. The first ticket in the chain was a copy of Pascal's Thoughts, purchased for certain marginal research in the political science degree course. This book is dedicated to Blaise Pascal: without him it would never have been written. Or it would have been completely different. (chapter I)"

"The excellent success of The Name of the Rose is precisely in the narrative happiness, in the consummate cunning of the profession, which also allows the housewife to get to the end by becoming passionate about the plot , absorbing its mischievous moods without even realizing it. In this sense, perfect mass instrument. (p. 33)"

"[Why did a great Mariologist like Laurentin never deal with Fatima?] Because he thought it was difficult. Lourdes was a linear apparition, that of Fatima had several parts and above all a disclosure of secrets much later in life. He therefore decided not to be called to investigate that fact. He also said this with great cultural independence to the president of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, sent directly by the Portuguese patriarch, who would have made everything possible available to him to study the phenomenon. And then too many political passions had been unleashed on Fatima which in his opinion would have hindered his work... [Laurentin was] a good and easy-going man, always available and he was not only a Mariologist and the greatest Lourdes expert."

"Too many political passions had been unleashed on Fatima which in his opinion would have hindered his work. So he said no. He told it to me after a swim in the Sine. [A bath in the Seine?] Yes. One day I went to visit him in the convent where he lived and where he carried out his work of caring for the souls of the nuns. He went away for a moment, returned with his bathing suit and dived into the Seine. He told me it was his only sport, he did it to keep fit and he crossed the Parisian river from bank to bank. Incredible."

"[Would the coming of the Madonna be a reminder?] Exactly and he said it recently also for Medjugorie. It may be that Maria wasn't there at the beginning, but now - he said - "I'm absolutely certain that she is there. Maria cannot deceive her children who scrape their knees on Krizevac and now she certainly is there" [A Protagonist of the Council who, however, was never classified as a conciliar man] Because he opposed the drift towards the imaginary Council and for this reason he was frowned upon by his professor colleagues. He opposed the post-conciliar madness."

"After Vatican II the only truly mass and popular movement was Medjugorje. It is then probable that Mary comes to the apparitions, even if these were not there at the beginning, [that is to say] that some apparitions were not such but become so later."

"The Orthodox surpass us in Marian devotion."

"[Renè Laurentin had] Marginal academic positions in France, his fortune was made in Italy and above all in the United States where he obtained a prestigious professorship, but let's not forget that he was registered in the register of professional journalists French and followed the Second Vatican Council on behalf of Le Figaro, of which he was an expert for the document on the Church. The final chapter of the conciliar document Lumen Gentium was practically written by him when he was a consultant at Vatican II."

"You can't capture young people with a Catholicism on the guitar. We have too many Dee Jays, only one Papa. [...] But young people need the silence of the monasteries, values ​​such as sacrifice, renunciation, commitment. (quoted in Messori: "But the Church is not a disco" , Corriere della sera, September 3, C.E.1997)"

"Great theologian, extraordinary scholar, priest of vigorous Christian life, von Balthasar also presented singular, perhaps contradictory, aspects. (from Opus Dei. An investigation, Mondadori, C.E.2002)"

"At least in something we should be grateful to the happily defunct Soviet Union. Which, immediately after its foundation, created the great Institute for Scientific Atheism in St. Petersburg, which it had renamed Leningrad, with thousands of employees and hundreds of university professors in contact. For seventy years they worked hard to demonstrate the incompatibility between science and religion (and just like that, Science and religion, was the name of their magazine, distributed free of charge in many languages, all over the world), for decades, therefore, they worked hard to find the objective, irrefutable, scientific proof of the non-existence of God. When everything collapsed, and when Leningrad went back to being called St. Petersburg, the famous Evidence had not been found: they could have searched for another seventy or seven hundred years, but it still wouldn't have turned up. Therefore, also thanks to the billions of rubles invested by State atheism, we have objective confirmation that faith cannot be refuted by scientific means. (from Why I believe, Milan, Piemme, 2010, page 264 ISBN 978-88-566-1321-6)"

"Matteo Strukul, Three unusual crimes, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2022. ISBN 978-88-227-7257-2"

"Matteo Strukul, Paolo and Francesca, Nord-Sud Edizioni, C.E.2022. ISBN 9788893082983"

"Matteo Strukul, The cemetery of Venice, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2022. ISBN 978-88-227-6433-1"

"Matteo Strukul, Dante enigma, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2021. ISBN 978-88-227-5028-0"

"Matteo Strukul, The crown of power. The saga of the seven dynasties, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2020. ISBN 978-88-227-4208-7"

"Matteo Strukul, The seven dynasties. The struggle for power in the great novel of Renaissance Italy, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2019. ISBN 978-88-22733832"

"Matteo Strukul, Michelangelo Inquisition, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2018. ISBN 978-88-22721242"

"Matteo Strukul, Giacomo Casanova. The sonata of broken hearts, Mondadori, C.E.2018. ISBN 978-8804664543"

"Matteo Strukul, The carousel of broken flowers. The case of the exterminating angel, Mondadori, C.E.2017. ISBN 978-8804678977"

"Matteo Strukul, The doctors. Decadence of a family, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2017. ISBN 978-8822707734"

"Matteo Strukul, The doctors. A queen in power, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2017. ISBN 978-8854195080"

"Matteo Strukul, The doctors. A man in power, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2016. ISBN 978-8854195073"

"Matteo Strukul, The doctors. A dynasty in power, Newton Compton Editori, C.E.2016. ISBN 978-8854194793"

"Matteo Strukul, The blood of the barons, Time Crime, C.E.2016. ISBN 978-8866882879"

"Matteo Strukul, The Knights of the North, Multiplayer Edizioni, C.E.2015. ISBN 978-8863553666"

"John Paul II, Words about man, edited by Angelo Montonati, preface by Vittorio Messori, BUR, C.E.1989. ISBN 88-17-11517-7"

"Vittorio Messori, Aldo Cazzullo, The Mystery of Turin, Mondadori editore – Le Scie, Milan, C.E.2004. ISBN 88-04-52070-1"

"Vittorio Messori, Bet on death, Società Editrice Internazionale, 7th edition, Turin, C.E.1987, ISBN 88-05-03746-X"

"Vittorio Messori, Hypothesis about Mary: facts, clues, enigmas, Edizioni Ares, Milan, C.E.2005. ISBN 88-8155-338-4"

"Vittorio Messori, Hypothesis on Jesus, Società Editrice Internazionale, Turin, C.E.1976."

"I want you (C.E.2007)"

"Three meters above the sky (C.E.2004)"

"With his books he gets rich, making entire generations stupid. (Andrea Rivera)"

"At the first presentation of Tre metri sopra il cielo in a Milanese bookshop there were five people and in the end even the owner left. At ten in the evening I found myself alone eating in a lame pizzeria. However, in Spain and South America they continue to read me and the Babi and Step trilogy was translated into the United States and inspired a Netflix series."

"I was actually the one who brought the first padlock to Ponte Milvio. The book [I want you] was supposed to be released on February 9, 2006, the day before I went out in the evening to put the lock on. I said to myself: suppose someone reading this comes here to see if the story is true..."

"The Ventaglio [publishing house] closed its doors but the book [Three meters above the sky] was now circulating in photocopies among the kids. It thus arrived in the hands of film producer Riccardo Tozzi who thought of making a film of it. At that point I also found the publisher. I sent the book to Feltrinelli, where Alberto Rollo worked as editor. In four days the bookstores sold 30 thousand copies. For three years he remained first in the rankings."

"[In C.E.1992] I worked in cinema and TV. I started in the footsteps of my father, Giuseppe Moccia, aka Pipolo. His first steps had been years earlier as assistant director on Attila flagello di Dio, the film with Diego Abatantuono and Rita Rusic."

"A heart sinking in an instant reveals a thousand secrets. (quoted in Corriere della Sera, October 22, C.E.2009)"

"An expected kiss is like a thousand sleepless nights. (quoted in Corriere della Sera, October 22, C.E.2009)"