Vittorio Messori
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Vittorio Messori (born 1941) is an Italian journalist and writer. According to Sandro Magister, a Vaticanist, he is the "most translated Catholic writer in the world."[1][clarification needed]
Life
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Messori had a completely secular upbringing.[citation needed] He was warned against priests by his mother, who often said that the Church was "only a pub."[citation needed] The schools he attended imparted an equally secular culture, and when he enrolled in the faculty of political science at Turin, all the teachers there taught "a radical, impenetrable agnosticism."[citation needed] He was "happy" with this, and "was preparing for a career as an entirely secular intellectual."[2]
In July and August 1964, however, he unexpectedly entered a new kind of dimension. In his own words, "the truth of the Gospel, that until then was unknown to me, became very clear and tangible. Even though I had never attended Church, even though I had never studied religion, I found that my perspective as a secularist and agnostic had become suddenly Christian. What's more, Catholic."[2]
Messori's teachers were "very surprised and disappointed" when he confessed that he had become a Catholic.[citation needed] They regarded his conversion as "a psychiatric crisis, a depression, a mistake," with the result that, as Messori says, "they abandoned me and finally disowned me."[2]
References
[edit]- ^ Magister, Sandro (22 April 2005). "From Rome to the World: The Global Offensive of the Catholic Media". Archived from the original on 14 March 2007. Archived 22 April 2005 at the Wayback Machine, 20 August 2004
- ^ a b c Catholic writer explains conversion, discusses new book, Catholic News Agency, 16 November 2009
External links
[edit]- Home page of Vittorio Messori – in Italian.
- Vittorio Messori review of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"
- Interview with Messori about anti-catholic provocations (pdf), in Il Giornale, 23 June 2007
