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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]
