Vittorio Messori

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Vittorio Messori, 2004

Vittorio Messori (born April 16, 1941 in Sassuolo ) is a Roman Catholic writer and journalist from Italy . His book Ipotesi su Gesù (Incarnate. Who was Jesus?), Which he wrote after his conversion to Catholicism in 1964 and published in 1976, was a bestseller in Italy and has been translated into many languages.

Live and act

Vittorio Messori was born into an anti-clerical , agnostic family in Emilia-Romagna . His father Enzo Messori was a successful writer who wrote poetry in the Modena dialect . Enzo Messori was a soldier under Mussolini, trained in Germany and then fought in the Piedmontese Alps against units under the command of de Gaulle . His son Vittorio attended the renowned Liceo Classico D'Azeglio , to which traditionally politically more left-wing or liberal families in Turin sent their children. He then studied political science at the University of Turin and finished his studies in 1965 with a dissertation on a topic from the history of the Risorgimento . During this time he was friends with intellectuals such as the historian Luigi Firpo (1915–1989) and the legal philosopher and publicist Norberto Bobbio .

In 1964 he converted to Catholicism , according to his own statements after intensive reading of Pascal and the Gospels . From 1966 to 1967 he lived in Assisi, where he took courses at the Institut Pro Civitate Christiana . In 1968 he returned to Turin to work as a journalist. He took a job at the Società Editrice Internazionale (SEI), a publishing house operated by the Salesian Order. At first he worked in the editorial department, but was soon appointed head of the printing plant ( Ufficio Stampa ). From 1986 to 1992 he had a column under the title Vivaio twice a week in the Catholic daily Avvenire . He has been writing regularly for Corriere della Sera since 1992 .

Messori has been married to the journalist Rosanna Brichetti Messori (* 1939) since 1996, after a marriage of 1972 that was annulled by the Vatican after years of investigation. Messori met Rosanna Brichetti shortly after the conversion while studying in Assisi . The Messori live in Desenzano del Garda .

Fonts

Ipotesi su Gesù

In 1975 Messori offered SEI the manuscript of his first book: Ipotesi su Gesú , which was published in 1978 under the title “Mensch. Who was Jesus? ”Was published in German translation. The book is the result of more than ten years of studying the history of Christianity, which began with his stay in Assisi. In 1976 the book appeared in a simple format with an edition of 3000 copies, which was sold within a very short time, as did the following reprints. In the 1980s the publisher sold up to 30,000 copies a year. In 2007 the publisher had sold one and a half million copies in Italy alone. Together with Guareschi's novel Don Camillo and Peppone and Umberto Eco's historical novel The Name of the Rose , the book was the best-selling and translated book in Italy at the time after World War II. This made it the first book published by a Catholic publishing house that regularly occupied places on the bestseller list. In the meantime, the demand has decreased, in Germany it is currently (2017) only available as an antiquarian.

Messori examines three hypotheses about the existence of Jesus in his book : The critical hypothesis - it assumes that Jesus lived, but was only later raised to the status of God's Son / God / Savior of humanity etc. The mythical hypothesis assumes that Jesus never lived as a person, but that he is a typical mythologization . Finally, the third hypothesis, the hypothesis of belief , accepts that the events related in the New Testament essentially happened as reported.

On the state of belief

Vittorio Messori with René Laurentin

"Rapporto sulla fede. Vittorio Messori a colloquio con Joseph Ratzinger "(German title" Zur Lage des Glaubens ") is the transcript of an interview that Messori conducted with the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , Cardinal Josef Ratzinger in Brixen , and which was published in 1985. The talks, which lasted three days, took place in the run-up to the 2nd Extraordinary General Assembly November / December 1985 on the "20th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council". In the conversation, Ratzinger formulates central positions on ecumenism , the causes of the crisis of faith, the liturgy and the Second Vatican Council . In the concentrated text, which was widely received as a criticism of the council, Ratzinger addresses a number of topics of the Catholic Church, from Christology to Mariology , moral theology and ecclesiology to angels and notions of the personal existence of Satan . The target group of the book was not the academic-theological, but initially an educated readership in Italy.

The book has been translated into several languages, received worldwide attention and was a bestseller in Italian, Spanish and German. The US edition had a circulation of half a million. The German magazine Der Spiegel called the book “a militant document of ecclesiastical restoration” and a “[…] parforce ride through almost all ecclesiastical subject areas […], with nowhere really separating what to do with the implementation of the Council and its difficulties Has. However, his post-conciliar state criticism is very clear: the one-sided church-centeredness ”.

The "Fall" Opus Dei

Vittorio Messori (ph. GianAngelo Pistoia) .tif

Opus Dei. Un'indagine (1994) was published in 1995 in a German translation as Der "Fall" Opus Dei with a foreword by Giuseppe Romano. Romano, an Italian publicist and co-editor of the “Studi cattolici” is himself the author of a book about the opus. In his book he addresses the accusations made against the Opus, which flared up again after the beatification of the founder Josemaría Escrivá by John Paul II in 1992 , and tries to refute them. In his book, Messori describes the internal organization of the Opus, the modalities of how to become a member, takes up the allegations directed against the Opus and tries to refute them objectively and to break down prejudices among the reader. The long-time Dpa correspondent in Italy Hanspeter Oschwald calls the book a "tribute book" for Opus Dei. Oschwald writes in Focus that Messori describes Escrivà's leadership style enthusiastically in Italian and also describes the opus as the tanks of the Catholic Church.

Awards

Works (selection)

  • Ipotesi su Gesù . Società Editrice Internazionale, Turin 1976 (extended new edition 2001, ISBN 88-05-05867-X )
German translation: Become human. Who was Jesus . Transferred by Helmut Machowetz. Styria-Verlag, Graz 1978
German translation: On the state of faith. A conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger . Verlag Neue Stadt, Munich / Zurich / Vienna 1985, ISBN 978-3-87996180-1
German translation: The "Fall" Opus Dei . With an afterword by Giuseppe Romano. Translated by Sigrid Spath. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-92827242-X
  • Patì sotto Ponzio Pilato? Un'indagine sulla passione e morte di Gesù . Società Editrice Internazionale, Turin 1992, ISBN 88-05-05295-7
German translation: Suffered under Pontius Pilate. An investigation into the suffering and death of Jesus. Adamas Verlag, Cologne 1997, ISBN 978-3-92574672-7
  • With Michele Brambilla: Qualche ragione per credere . Mondadori, Milan 1997, ISBN 88-04-41785-4 .
German translation: The believer is right . Sankt Ulrich Verlag, Augsburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-929246-57-5
  • Il Mistero di Torino. Due ipotesi su una capitale incompresa . Mondadori, Milan 2005, ISBN 978-88-0454785-3

literature

  • Aurelio Porfiri: Ipotesi su Vittorio Messori. Prefazione di Marco Tosatti. Hong Kong, Roma: Chorabooks Editore 2017. ISBN 98-877-2591-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefano Lorenzetto: "Vi racconto mio marito Messori" Il Giornale.it, accessed on June 25, 2017
  2. ^ Antonia Gaspari: Vittorio Messori: la storia di una conversione in: Zeno, il mondo visto da Roma, November 25, 2008, accessed on June 26, 2007
  3. ↑ Source: Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori
  4. ↑ Thorsten Maaßen: The ecumenical understanding of Joseph Ratzinger. Göttingen: V&R unipress 2011. pp. 123–124.
  5. ↑ Marco Politi: Benedict. Crisis of a pontificate. Berlin: Rotbuch-Verl. 2012.
  6. ↑ Rauch des Satans Spiegel. Online, November 25, 1985. Retrieved June 16, 2017
  7. ↑ Short biography
  8. ↑ Hanspeter Oschwald: In the name of the Holy Father. Munich: Heyne 2010.
  9. ↑ Holy tanks in: Focus. No. 37, 1995. Retrieved June 27, 2017
  10. ↑ Scrittori: Vittorio Messori premiato dal re di Spagna adnkronos, June 19, 2000, accessed on June 25, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Messori, Vittorio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Sassuolo