Vittorio Messori
 | You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Italian. (March 2009) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
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
Messori had a completely secular upbringing. He was warned against priests by his mother, who often said that the Church was "only a pub." 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." 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. 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
- ^ Sandro Magister. "From Rome to the World: The Global Offensive of the Catholic Media" 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
- 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
