Source on Vittorio Messori

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“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)”

“The Christian God proposes and does not impose, always leaving a margin of darkness that allows denial and that saves man's freedom; and, for Him, the right to forgive. (p. 91)”

“Status social, culture, wealth, even health: the very opposite of all this in Marie-Bernarde Soubirous, known as Bernadette, fourteen years old (but with the development of a ten year old, according to doctors who visited her, and not yet a woman, due to insufficient nutrition); asthmatic; stomach ache; closed in her silence as a shy and introverted person; illiterate and considered by some of her relatives incapable of learning anything; she is also uneducated in religious matters, so much so that she even ignores the mystery of the Trinity; daughter of the most miserable family in the city; resident in the cell of the municipal prison, cleared by the authorities because she was considered unhealthy for the inmates themselves; with the father not only bankrupt and with the reputation - albeit abusive - of a slacker and a drunkard, but also with a stay in prison behind him on suspicion of theft: released after nine days, he dropped the accusation, it was so inconsistent, but without proceeding to any judgment, so as to leave him with a defamatory suspicion. Let us realize: in all this, only the eyes of faith can see a mysterious conformity to the Gospel and, therefore, the stigmata of truth. Only adhering to an inverted perspective compared to the "eyes of the flesh" can make us hear the echoes of the Magnificat intoned by She of whom Bernadette Soubirous was a witness: «... she looked at the humility of her servant [ ...]; she has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; she has overthrown the mighty from their thrones, she has exalted the humble; she has filled the hungry with good things; she sent the rich away empty-handed ... »( Luke 1, 48 and 51 ff.) (p. 92)”

“In May C.E.1949, the Council of Europe was established in Strasbourg, a body then devoid of effective political powers and charged only with «laying the foundations for the construction of a European federation». Thus in the act of its foundation. The following year - therefore, in C.E.1950 - that Council announced a competition of ideas, open to all artists, for a flag of the future united Europe. A then young Alsatian designer, Arsène Heitz, participated with a sketch, where twelve white stars stood out in a circle on a blue background. As he later revealed, the idea was not accidental: devoted to the Madonna, he recited the rosary every day. Just when he heard about the European competition and decided to participate, he was reading the story of Saint Catherine Labouré and – stimulated by that reading – he had decided to procure, for himself and his wife, a «Miraculous Medal», which he had not known about until then. The stars, therefore, of his plan came from there: and, there, they came directly from the Apocalypse and from the "Woman clothed with the sun" with the crown around her head. As for blue, it was the traditional color of the Virgin. Among the 101 sketches that arrived from all over the world, "inexplicably", as Heitz himself said (who had participated in the competition without too much hope, almost only to respond to an impulse given to him by the discovery of the Medal), the Council of Europe chose his. It should be noted, among other things, that the head of the commission that made the choice was a Jew, Paul M.G.Lévy, director of the Council's Press and Information Service. Therefore, no confessional motivations were at work [...] Furthermore, to confirm the singularity of the choice, Heitz's proposal was opposed by the fact that, if there were 12 stars on the proposed flag, not as many were then the States of the Council. In fact, in the face of criticism, the designer had to reply that the twelve represented a "symbol of fullness" (and this is, in fact, also in the Old Testament: twelve, among other things, the sons of Jacob , like the 12 tribes of Israel; and therefore twelve is the number wanted by Jesus for his apostles, meaning that the Church is the "new chosen people"). Having adopted this symbolic perspective, the community authorities, when Europe's member states ended up exceeding a dozen, officially established that the number of stars on the flag was to be considered immutable. (pp. 107-108)”

“Fatima, in fact, is the name of Muhammad's favorite daughter [...] All of Islàm, beyond every school, has not forgotten a 'hadit' ' of Muhammad, a saying, that is, handed down by the oral tradition of the first disciples and considered a source of revelation alongside the Koran. That hadit preserved a word of the prophet of Islam addressed to Fatima: «You will be the mistress of women in Paradise, after Màryam». A superiority, therefore, in the Muslim sky itself, of what Christians call Regina Coeli. And, at the same time, a direct link with Fatima. The two exercise together (even if Mary is at the top) a sort of lordship in Paradise. It is not surprising, therefore, that Louis Massignon [...] saw not a random coincidence, but rather an eloquent sign in the fact that Mary, "Mistress of women" in the Muslim Paradise, chose to appear in a location hitherto unknown to many of the same Portuguese, but who bore the proper name of one who, for Muhammad, is immediately below her in the kingdom of the blessed. [...] so that Islamic pilgrims, even if unorganized, have never been lacking in Fatima and are now always growing. [...] It is singular that, in so much talk of ecumenism, Mary is the "place" where Muslims and Christians (those, at least, Catholic and Orthodox) are closer than anywhere else. (pp. 187-191)”

“Judaism – as has been said, albeit in a somewhat simplified way – is the religion of hope; the Christianity of charity; the islamism of faith. (p. 191)”

“The Marian dogmas are, as we know, four in all: perpetual virginity and divine motherhood; then, after almost fifteen centuries of debate and exploration of the mystery, here is the conception without the stain of original sin and the assumption into heaven. Well, these truths have been codified and solemnly protected as dogmas, that is, as basic and indisputable truths of the faith, not so much out of devotion to Mary, but as a defense of faith in Jesus. In fact, if we reflect on their content , we realize that they reaffirm the authentic faith in Christ as true God and true man: two natures in one Person. They then reiterate the fundamental eschatological expectation, indicating in Mary the immortal destiny that awaits us all. And, finally, they secure the faith, now threatened, in a creator God (it is one of the meanings of the more misunderstood truth about Mary's perpetual virginity), a God who can freely intervene even on matter. (p. 236)”

“Mary is «figure», «image» of the Church. Both have motherhood as their primary vocation. Thus, looking at her, this Church is protected from a "male chauvinist" model, which sees her as an instrument to pursue a socio-political action program. In Mary, her figure and icon, the Church rediscovers the face of her mother, it does not degenerate into an involution that transforms it into a sort of party, into an organization, into a pressure group serving interests humans. To repeat, here, the words of Ratzinger: «If Mary no longer finds a place in certain theologies and ecclesiologies of today, the reason is simple and dramatic: they have reduced faith to an abstraction. And an abstraction doesn't know what to do with a mother." (pp. 237-238)”

“Verlaine, the maudit poet, but with a strong religious torment that ended up prevailing, speaking of the love for Mary: «all other loves are orders». With similar words, he wanted to underline that "free" character of Marian devotion that the Church has always safeguarded. Over 20 centuries, only a few dogmas have been proclaimed about her di lei: which among other things, we know, are at the service and shelter of her di lei Son di lei, well before her di lei. Only to these defined truths does the Catholic owe homage. Everything else, regarding Mary, is left to the free sensitivity and initiative of the believer. (p. 274)”

“Mariology is closely linked to Christology: abandoning or even just downsizing the former means calling into question the latter as well. (p. 322)”

“«How many divisions does the pope have?». Stalin's question found, more than forty years later, a first answer in Warsaw, then in Budapest, then in Moscow itself from where, as we write, Gorbachev respectfully asks [ [Pope John Paul II|John Paul]] to be able to meet him to see if and how he may help him to bring the USSR and its satellites out of a history that is not only no longer practicable but now intolerable. (p. VII)”

“This book , in fact, is an effective sum of the perspective of life and thought of a man who moves as a protagonist on the scene of the history of everyone, not just his faithful. (p. VII)”

“La passion de convaincre, the passion to convince: this, for Blaise Pascal, the distinctive sign of every Christian who is truly convinced that he has found it in the Gospel – or rather in the personal encounter with Christ – the truth about man and humanity. That passion seems to entirely pervade the pope "who came from afar". (IX)”

“The Christian Karol Wojtyla is convinced that the man has lost the keys that allow him to open the drawer inside which is the man's instruction booklet. For him, brothers in humanity are certainly not "bad": they are simply lost, confused, lost, plagiarized by bad teachers, by deceptive suggestions. (IX)”