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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 ]
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]
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact. It can also mean an apathy towards such religious belief and refer to personal limitations rather than a worldview. Another definition is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist."
In European Christianity, the divine right of kings, divine right, or God's mandation, is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of a monarchy. It is also known as the divine-right theory of kingship.
Opus Dei is an institution of the Catholic Church that claims to have been initiated by divine inspiration and was founded in Spain in 1928 by Catholic priest Josemaría Escrivá. Its mission is to help its lay and clerical members to seek Christian perfection in their everyday occupations and within their societies.
Crossing the Threshold of Hope was written in 1994 by Pope John Paul II. It was published originally in Italian by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and in English by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. It is distributed by Random House, Inc., New York City. By 1998, the book had sold several million copies and was published in forty languages. Over one million copies were sold in Italy alone.
Bernardus Johannes Alfrink was a Dutch Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Utrecht from 1955 to 1975, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1960.
Opus Dei and politics is a discussion on Opus Dei's view on politics, its role in politics and its members involvement in politics.
Opus Dei and Catholic Church Leaders discusses the comments and observations of popes, cardinals, and other leaders of the Catholic Church as regards the Personal Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei.
Sir Arnold Henry Moore Lunn was a skier, mountaineer and writer. He was knighted for "services to British Skiing and Anglo-Swiss relations" in 1952. His father was a lay Methodist minister, but Lunn was an agnostic and wrote critically about Catholicism before he converted to that religion at the age of 45 and became an apologist.
Opus Dei in society refers to the social mission, general social strategy, social activities, work, relationship with politics and other aspects of Opus Dei.
Carlo Maria Martini was an Italian Jesuit and Biblical scholar. He served as Archbishop of Milan from 1980 to 2004 and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1983.
Francis Mary Paul Libermann was a French Jewish convert to Catholicism and a Spiritan priest. He is best known for founding the Society of the Holy Heart of Mary, which later merged with the Spiritans. He is often referred to as "The Second Founder of the Spiritans". He was declared venerable in the Catholic Church on 1 June 1876, by Pope Pius IX.
Magdi Cristiano Allam, is an Egyptian-Italian journalist and politician, noted for his criticism of Islam and his articles on the relations between Western culture and the Islamic world.
Sandro Magister is an Italian journalist who writes for the magazine L'espresso.
Lucian Mureșan is a Romanian prelate of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church who has been the first Major Archbishop of the Greek Catholic Archdiocese of Făgăraș and Alba Iulia since 2005. He was archbishop there from 1994 to 2005 and bishop of Maramureș from 1990 to 1994. He has been a cardinal of the Catholic Church since 2012. As Major Archbishop of Făgăraș and Alba Iulia he is based in Blaj and is the head of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church.
Gualtiero Bassetti is an Italian Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Perugia-Città della Pieve from 2009 to 2022. He has been a bishop since 1994 and was made a cardinal in 2014. He was president of the Italian Episcopal Conference from 2017 to 2022.
