Poem of the Man-God
Maria Valtorta
The Poem of the Man-God, often promoted
as the “bible” of the modern visionary move-
ment, is a five-volume life of Christ written in the
1940s by Maria Valtorta, an invalid Italian wom-
an born in 1897 in Caserta. Her notebooks com-
prise almost fifteen thousand pages and, accord-
ing to the author, were dictated by
entities that called themselves Jesus
and Mary. The work contains serious
theological errors and heresies.
Valtorta’s life of Jesus was first
called “The Gospel of Our Lord
Jesus Christ as it was revealed to
Little John”, later shortened to “The
Poem of Jesus”, perhaps to hide
the fact that it was, in reality, a new
gospel. The title was then revised
to “The Poem of the Man-God”,
which accurately portrays Jesus in the
light of New Age doctrine, that each
person is capable of achieving Christ
consciousness. The God-Man Jesus
Christ has never been a part of Gnos-
tic teaching, but Christos, the child of humanity,
is the “one in you who is you”, the “man-God”.
Contrary to the Book of Genesis, in which
original sin was an act of disobedience that
endowed Adam and Eve with the knowledge
of evil, Valtorta’s Jesus declares that original sin
was the sexual union of Adam and Eve, who
would have been demigods capable of generat-
ing children from the light had they not imitated
the animals. In their fallen nature, the descen-
dents of the first parents have become lower than
beasts, despised by God. By changing the nature
of original sin from acquiring the knowledge
of evil to human procreation, The Poem of the
Man-God rejects the idea that acquiring occult
knowledge through gnosis is a form of idolatry.
It also proclaims that God intended to father the
human race without human intercourse, which is
a direct contradiction of the book of Genesis.
Unlike John the Evangelist’s powerful dec-
laration that “in the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God.” (Jn 1:1-3), The Poem declares that in
the beginning Mary was with God and that she
was Wisdom who became Word, a dangerous
theological error. Mary is no longer the obedi-
ent handmaiden of God who was united with
her Son in one single act of redemp-
tion on the cross, but equal to God
and superior to her son, replacing
him in a separate and greater act of
redemption through messages given
privately to individuals. For Gnostics,
Sophia is a key part of the Godhead,
a transcendental being who came
forth from the Most High God. The
Gnostic Christ is joined to Sophia
and works miracles through her
power, a concept stated explicitly in
The Poem.
Another heresy is the revelation
that Jesus Christ does not forgive sin,
the tenet of faith that is central to
Christianity and essential for salva-
tion: “Listen how many times, how and why
you have to forgive. You must forgive as God
forgives. Who forgives a thousand times, if one
sins a thousand times and repents. Providing He
sees that in man there is no will to sin, no pursuit
of what makes one sin and that sin is only the
result of man’s weakness”. This is reiterated in
The End Times when Valtorta’s Jesus proclaims:
“I am the merciful One. I am indulgent and I
forgive. There is so much that I forgive. I for-
give what I see you do out of human weakness,
not what is done out of deliberate human self-
interest.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church
defines mortal sin as “sin whose object is grave
matter and which is also committed with full
knowledge and deliberate consent.’”
Valtorta’s Jesus stated to a Roman, “I am
Reason united to God. And what is philosophy,
when it is true and honest, but an elevation of
human reason towards the infinite Wisdom and
Power, that is towards God? I am not divine as
you understand the term. You call divine who
 Poem of the Man-God
is superior to man. I say that that word is to be
given only to him who is from God.” Valtorta’s
Jesus then invited the Roman to “Come to the
true God and His divine spirit will indoctrinate
you in the true wisdom and piety, which is to
know yourself and worship the Truth”, quot-
ing from Galen, an ancient Greek physician who
was born nearly one hundred years after Christ’s
death (129-200 A.D.). The statements not only
deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God
who became man so that we can enter the king-
dom of God, but also attempt to indoctrinate the
reader in the Gnostic heresy that true wisdom
is to “know yourself” rather than to know, love,
and serve the God who created us.
In addition to The Poem, Valtorta’s work
includes many other dictations from the same
entity, which are more explicitly New Age. In
“The Power of Obedience” the entity Jesus de-
clares that the new evangelization is directed to-
ward the elite in order to make them demi-gods.
He promises to “raise the veils” for them on the
mysteries of the future age. In The End Times
Valtorta’s Jesus proclaims that these new revela-
tions are an “extraordinary use of the Word” to
enlighten those souls ready to receive it, whom
he says he is turning into “radiotelephone opera-
tors” because his teachings have “been forgotten
or twisted, forgotten too much and twisted too
much, because it came in handy to forget it and
twist it.”
Many passages of The Poem mock Christ,
his mother and the Gospel. At the Last Supper,
for example, Thaddeus has an outburst of rage
and knocks Judas down with a mighty back-
handed blow, threatening to strangle him. Jesus
comes in unexpectedly and asks Peter if he has
a toothache. They start pouring and passing the
wine, with Jesus singing, “I had faith, that is why
I spoke. But I was deeply humiliated. And in my
dismay I said: “Every man is untruthful”. After
the Crucifixion, Mary does not wish to wrap
Jesus in burial shrouds as required by Jewish
law, chastises all men as wolves and snakes, and
states that she is “hanging from a thread over an
abyss”. That thread is her faith.
According to Father Mitch Pacwa, in 1947,
four years after Valtorta began to receive her
“dictations”, she handed over 10,000 hand-
written pages to her spiritual director, Father
Romuald Migliorini, O.S.M. Another priest,
Father Corrado Berti, O.S.M., brought the
manuscript to Monsignor (later Cardinal) Au-
gustin Bea, S.J., spiritual director to Pope Pius
XII. According to the books’ promoters, Mon-
signor Bea said in 1952, “As far as exegesis is
concerned, I did not find any errors in the parts
which I examined,” clearly indicating that he
did not read the work in its entirety. On Febru-
ary 26 of the following year, Fathers Migliorini
and Berti had a private audience with Pope Pius
XII. Later, as he stood in Saint Peter’s Square,
Father Berti wrote down Pope Pius’ words as
he remembered them: “Publish this work as it
is. There is no need to give an opinion about its
origin, whether it be extraordinary or not. Who-
ever reads it, will understand. One hears of many
visions and revelations. I will not say they are all
authentic, but there are some of which it could
be said that they are.”
The books’ promoters called Pope Pius XII’s
words a “Supreme Pontifical Imprimatur”, in
spite of the fact that an imprimatur is never oral
and the Holy Father did not examine the books.
Father Berti then brought the books to the Vati-
can press, expecting publication. In 1949, how-
ever, two commissioners from the Holy Office,
Msgr. Giovanni Pepe and Father Berruti, O.P.,
condemned the work and ordered Father Berti
to sign an agreement not to publish it. Instead
of handing over every copy as requested, Father
Berti returned the original manuscripts to Val-
torta. In 1952, in violation of his signed agree-
ment, Father Berti went to publisher Emiliano
Pisani who, although fully aware of the Holy
Office’s opposition, printed the first volume in
1956, which was followed by a new volume each
year through 1959.
After the fourth volume appeared, the Holy
Office examined The Poem and condemned it,
recommending that it be placed on the Index on
December 16, 1959. Pope John XXIII signed
the decree. The condemnation was published
in L’Osservatore Romano on January 6, 1969,
along with an article entitled “A Badly Fictional-
ized Life of Jesus”. The books’ condemnation
did not stop publication, however. A second
edition of ten volumes was printed and likewise
condemned on December 1, 1961. The books
were later translated into German, French,
 Poem of the Man-God
Spanish and English. The Poem of the Man-God
is now published in twelve languages and is be-
ing promoted at unapproved apparition sites all
over the world as a work that was approved by
the Blessed Mother.
On April 17, 1993, Cardinal Joseph Ratz-
inger (now Pope Benedict XVI) wrote: “The
‘visions’ and ‘dictations’ referred to in the work,
The Poem of the Man-God, are simply the liter-
ary forms used by the author to narrate in her
own way the life of Jesus. They cannot be con-
sidered supernatural in origin.” While acting as
head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doc-
trine of the Faith in 1985, Cardinal Ratzinger
wrote that “the Index retains its moral force
despite its dissolution.”