Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947)

Key dates

• April 23, 1865 — Born in Corato (Apulia, Italy), into a modest farming family. Fourth of five daughters^[10].
• April 23, 1874 — First Communion (and Confirmation) at age nine: from that moment she begins to hear the voice of Jesus, especially after Communion^[11].
• 1888 — Permanently bedridden: until her death in 1947 — nearly sixty years — she takes practically no more food, rejects all solid food intact and drinks only a little almond syrup, the Eucharist remaining her only nourishment^[12][13][14].
• March 8, 1898 — Pope Leo XIII grants by rescript an indult for the celebration of Mass once a week at Luisa's home^[15].
• February 28, 1899 — Under obedience to her confessor, Luisa begins to write her Diary (the future Book of Heaven, 36 volumes). She will write until December 28, 1938^[16].
• May 23, 1905 — Pope Saint Pius X extends Leo XIII's rescript for seven further years^[17].
• 1908 — Archbishop Francesco Paolo Carrano of Trani appoints Saint Annibale Maria di Francia extraordinary reviser of Luisa's writings; he becomes her personal confessor and publisher for nineteen years, until 1927^[18].
• June 25, 1914 — First Italian edition of the Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Archbishop Carrano attaches pontifical indulgences to it^[19].
• August 6, 1926 — Saint Annibale Maria di Francia places his Nihil Obstat on the first nineteen manuscript volumes of the Diary^[20].
• September-October 1926 — Archbishop Giuseppe Maria Leo of Trani grants the Imprimatur on those same nineteen volumes^[21].
• June 1, 1927 — Death of Saint Annibale Maria di Francia^[22].
• July 13, 1938 — The Holy Office places three of Luisa's works on the Index librorum prohibitorum. In an act of heroic obedience, Luisa immediately hands over her books and addresses to her bishop an act of unconditional submission to the judgment of the Church. She ceases all writing activity on December 28, 1938^[23].
• March 4, 1947 — Death of Luisa in Corato, in the odor of sanctity^[24].
• February 24, 1994 — The Congregation for the Causes of Saints grants its Non Obstare to the opening of the cause for beatification (official declaration dated February 25, 1994); Cardinal Angelo Felici, Prefect of the Congregation, confirms it to Archbishop Cassati by letter of March 28, 1994^[25].
• November 20, 1994 — Archbishop Carmelo Cassati officially opens the cause for beatification^[26].
• June 2024 — The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith grants a new Nulla Osta to the continuation of the cause, noting the absence of doctrinal error in the writings^[27].
• December 3, 2024 — Archbishop Philippe Curbelié, Under-Secretary of the Dicastery, signs the official letter (Prot. N. 94/37 — 102675) addressed to the French episcopate, publicly confirming the Nulla Osta^[28].

Childhood (1865-1874)

Luisa was born on the morning of Sunday, April 23, 1865, Sunday in albis (the Sunday after Easter), in Corato, in the Diocese of Trani, in the region of Apulia. She was baptized that same evening. She herself reports having been born “backwards,” and that her mother did not experience the usual sufferings of pregnancy — signs, she would later say, that her life too would be “backwards compared to the life of others”^[29].

Her parents, Vito Nicola Piccarreta and Rosa Tarantino, belonged to rather poor farming families. They had five daughters — Maria, Rachela, Philomena, Luisa (the fourth) and Angela — and worked for a wealthy family, the Mastrorilli, owners of a house on Via Murge in Corato and of a farm some thirty kilometers to the west. The Piccarretas lived in a structure on the roof of the Via Murge house; that is where Luisa was born. During the warm season, the family would leave Corato for several months to work on the farm. Luisa spent many hours there in her favorite hiding place, in the hollow of a tree^[30].

Luisa's parents were devout: they prayed the Rosary every day and attended Mass as often as they could. Luisa reports: “Mama and Papa were angels of purity and modesty… There was no room in our home for lies and falsehood.”^[31] Luisa and her sisters never heard a single swear word in the house; the Piccarretas were honest, courteous, hardworking people. It was in this holy atmosphere that Luisa learned the first teachings of the faith.

Timid by nature, Luisa would hide behind a bed whenever a visitor entered the house. This fear came above all from the frightening nightmares she had every night from the age of three, recounted in her Childhood Memories Notebook:

“From the tender age of three or four until about ten, I was easily frightened. I was sometimes so afraid that I could not stay alone or go out without being accompanied. […] The devil frightened me so much that I trembled with terror. I often dreamed that he was trying to seize me and carry me away… The day after one of my nightmares, its memory haunted me and I was afraid of the devil wherever I went.”^[32]

To fight her fears, Luisa took refuge in prayer — Our Father, Hail Mary, invocation of the saints — spending long hours each day beseeching the Virgin and her guardian angel. She spent her whole childhood within the family circle, with the exception of one school year with the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, where she completed the equivalent of a second year of primary school^[33]. Later, Jesus would reveal to her that this very timidity was part of a providential plan:

“My daughter, even the timid nature under which I kept you in your tender age was one of My greatest jealousies of love toward you. I wanted you to be influenced by no one, neither by people nor by the world; I wanted to detach you from everything.”^[34]

Symmetrically, Jesus would later interpret her own childhood nightmares for her:

“My daughter, the enemy glimpsed the plans of My Providence. He sensed that you would render Me great glory and that he would be crushed by you as never before. […] Hoping to destroy you, he watched you carefully in order to discover My plans.”^[35]

Despite her timidity, Luisa concealed a strong will and a keen love of nature, outdoor games and animals. One episode from her earliest childhood would remain famous: a horse belonging to the Mastrorilli estate fell gravely ill and her father was about to send for the veterinarian. Luisa begged to be allowed into the stable. Her father refused, then yielded to her insistence. A few minutes later, when the veterinarian arrived, he discovered the little girl joyfully stroking a horse in full health^[36]. This trait — extreme timidity out of concern for souls, but supernatural boldness whenever it was a matter of doing good — would remain the seal of her entire life.

Christ's call (1874-1881)

On April 23, 1874, her ninth birthday, Luisa received her First Communion and Confirmation. Father Phillip Furio, who prepared her, passed on to her inspiring words about Jesus “imprisoned” in the tabernacle — which moved her to tears. The grace of the sacraments opened a new chapter: from that moment she began to hear the voice of Jesus, especially after Holy Communion^[37].

At eleven, Luisa joined the Society of the Daughters of Mary, taking the name Magdalene. She then received the grace to overcome the fears that had tormented her for more than seven years: “Why are you afraid? Your angel is at your side. Jesus is in your heart and your Mother in heaven keeps you under her mantle,” she heard at the moment she wished to pray^[38].

Under Jesus' direction, Luisa undertook a painful process of detachment so as to live completely united with Him. He taught her to mortify her own will:

“We will no longer concern ourselves now with working to eliminate your affections for creatures, but your affection for yourself. I want to make you die to yourself so that you may live only for Me. I want to imprint in you nothing but My Life.”^[39]

Her interior voice warned her as soon as she was distracted by chatter, overly admired sacred decorations, or a moment of excessive comfort (“You are too comfortable. You do not consider that My Life was one of continual sufferings!”^[40]). To anyone who had not grasped what was at stake, this discipline might seem tyrannical. But it was in reality that of a demanding ballet master exacting perfection from a passionate dancer: Jesus was preparing Luisa for a mission whose scope justified its rigor. It was in this atmosphere that her first ecstasies began to occur, sometimes noticed by those close to her — young Maria Dora, who looked after her, would later say she disliked watching over her because of these raptures, and that she had even seen her playing with “a little boy” who may well have been the Child Jesus^[41].

In 1878, at 13, while working and meditating on the Passion, she experienced a striking vision from her balcony: “I saw an immense crowd of people passing in the street. They were leading my most gentle Jesus, pushing and pulling Him. Jesus carried His Cross on His shoulder. He was exhausted and sweating blood. He raised His eyes to me to ask for help.”^[42] Overwhelmed, Luisa was set ablaze with a “keen desire to suffer with Him” that would never be extinguished^[43].

At 14, Luisa wanted to enter the convent. She presented herself first to the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, then to the cloistered Poor Clares of Trani — she was refused by both, her mother having warned the sisters about her supernatural illnesses^[44]. Later, Jesus would tell her:

“In the soul I have called to be religious, I look at the spirit of the religious life. The cloister means nothing to Me. That is why I tell you that you are, and will always be, the true little religious of My Heart.”^[45]

Between 1878 and 1881, Jesus allowed the demons to do battle with Luisa to purify her^[46]. At 15-16, she was tortured physically and spiritually: the demons beat her, strangled her, incited her to suicide, accused her of sins against God's Mercy. Jesus taught her to ignore them “as if they were ants,” to take refuge in meditation on the Sacred Wounds and to offer her sufferings^[47]. In 1881, a final diabolical assault nearly killed her in the countryside^[48]; it was then that she saw Jesus delivered to executioners^[49] and that the Virgin Mary invited her to offer herself as a victim^[50].

The vocation of victim (1881-1888)

It was thus at 16, in 1881, that Luisa officially accepted the state of victim soul^[51]. A few days later, Jesus offered her His mystical crown of thorns as a sign — which she felt so keenly that she could take no food for several days^[52].

At 17, she composed the Christmas Novena in honor of the nine months during which Jesus remained in the virginal Womb of Mary. It was during this novena that Jesus entrusted to her His “nine excesses of love”^[53].

At 18, she entered the Third Order of Saint Dominic, keeping the name Magdalene — a name she would bear until her death. She now recited the Divine Office each day, and maintained a special devotion to Saint Dominic, Saint Catherine of Siena, and the Rosary^[54].

At 22 (1887), she remained eighteen days in a state of lethargy from which only a priest — by blessing and the order of holy obedience — could draw her out. From this event Luisa understood that “God's Power is bound to the priesthood of His ministers”: her daily release would henceforth require the assistance of a priest^[55].

During a cholera epidemic in 1887, her confessor Father Cosimo Di Loiodice fully understood her vocation as victim — three days of offered suffering put an end to the scourge^[56]. He was succeeded by Father Michele De Benedictis, the confessor of her childhood, to whom Luisa could open her heart completely. Jesus asked her to offer herself as a perpetual victim “not only for the good of creatures living in sin, but for the good of those who will come after” — and Father De Benedictis gave his permission^[57].

From 1888 on, Luisa was permanently bedridden, vomited all solid food, and lived practically on the Eucharist alone^[58]. Worried by this permanent fast, Father De Benedictis asked Luisa to end her state of victimhood. Jesus then gave her confessor a prophetic sign: the war between Italy and the Ethiopian Empire would cease when Luisa became a victim again. On May 2, 1889, a treaty of perpetual peace was indeed signed between Italy and Ethiopia — the confessor could no longer doubt^[59].

The mystical marriage (1888-1900)

On October 21, 1888 — the third Sunday of October, feast of the Purity of the Virgin Mary — almost a year after Luisa became bedridden, Jesus came to her in all His majesty, accompanied by the Virgin Mary and Saint Catherine of Siena. As the angels sang a heavenly hymn, Jesus placed a ring on her finger and kissed her: this was the mystical marriage^[60]. Already before this, several mystical crucifixions without exterior stigmata had prepared that night: Jesus appeared crucified, nails of light came forth from His wounds to penetrate Luisa's hands, feet and heart, plunged in pain so keen that only a confessor, by obedience, could free her from it^[61]. On the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (year unknown), Saint John the Evangelist descended in a vision bearing the Cross, followed by the Virgin and the angels: Jesus crucified Luisa, and the souls in Purgatory for whom she had offered herself rose to Heaven around her singing — “a day of unheard-of sufferings and ineffable joys”^[62].

Jesus gave her five new rules of life, the most radical of which was:

“Like a bride and bridegroom, let there be in the future no more ‘you' and ‘I,' ‘I will do' and ‘you will do.' These words will disappear and be replaced by ‘we will do.' Everything will be ‘ours.'”^[63]

But the decisive step came on November 16, 1900: Jesus enclosed Luisa's heart within His Most Sacred Heart and asked her never to leave His Will, “even for a single instant”^[64]. From that moment Luisa began to be centered in the Divine Will and to possess it entirely — this was the beginning of the explicit teaching on Living in the Divine Will that would form the heart of her charism^[65]. On March 8, 1898, Pope Leo XIII had already granted by rescript an indult allowing the celebration of Mass at Luisa's home once a week for seven years, on account of her immobility; on May 23, 1905, Saint Pius X extended this privilege for seven further years, and in 1908, at the request of Archbishop Francesco Paolo Carrano (new Archbishop of Trani), Pius X authorized daily celebration in the bedroom turned chapel, as well as Communion for two members of the family and the altar servers^[66]. A large wardrobe opened each morning served as the altar.

The daily life of a bedridden mystic

From 1888 until her death in 1947 — fifty-nine years — Luisa's daily life followed an unchanging rhythm.

Around midnight or one in the morning, her body petrified, her breathing ceased, and her soul separated from her body. The body remained “motionless, like a huge piece of lead” until six in the morning. Meanwhile, her soul traveled the whole world with Jesus, visited Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, and witnessed scenes from the life of Jesus and Mary. Often, Jesus showed her sinners in need of conversion. Luisa agreed to offer herself as a victim for their salvation, and later learned of the conversion of the souls for whom she had offered herself^[67].

Around 6 in the morning, her confessor came to revive her: he traced a sign of the cross on the back of her hand, ordering her to return “by virtue of holy obedience.” Luisa's body then relaxed, and her sisters could settle her seated in her bed^[68].

Her room was austere: a statue of the Child Jesus decorated with flowers on the nightstand; a white curtain that could close off her bed for the privacy of prayer; a crucifix hung facing her; a clock, a painting of the Holy Family and other images of saints. Later were added an image of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and of the Sacred Heart of Jesus brought by Saint Annibale di Francia^[69].

After Mass and rest, Luisa began her daily manual work: lace, knitting, making altar cloths, ornaments and liturgical vestments. She also received a growing crowd of visitors, especially after the First World War — mostly young girls from Corato. She taught them to sew and, while working, to meditate hour by hour on the Passion of Jesus. One of them, Francesca Capozza, first entered her room at seven or eight years old during the Great War: Luisa taught her lace; one day, wanting to surprise Luisa in ecstasy, her feet remained nailed to the ground; on several occasions, she saw the lips of the crucified Christ move on the wall while Luisa conversed with Him. Francesca would later join the Daughters of Divine Zeal founded by Saint Annibale^[70].

Around two or three in the afternoon, Luisa was brought her meal — a small quantity of food which she regurgitated after a few minutes with a hiccup, into a vessel she always kept within reach. She ate only out of strict obedience to her confessor^[71]. Her servant of forty years, Rosaria Bucci, would later confirm: Luisa systematically rejected everything she swallowed, never drank water but only almond syrup, and the archbishop had asked that this remain discreet, “so as to avoid curious crowds as with Thérèse Neumann”^[72]. She devoted another hour to meditation and the chaplet, then resumed her work until 10:30-11 p.m. It was around those hours that Luisa wrote down on paper what Jesus had dictated to her during the day. The next morning, her confessor read the text^[73].

Luisa herself explained that Jesus spoke to her in four distinct ways^[74]:

1. By bringing her soul out of her body, as each night, for extended visions.
2. By appearing in person to her soul — within her body this time — in the form of a Child, a young Man or the Crucified; His words reached the understanding directly.
3. By participation in His Essence: to make understood a truth — for example divine purity or beauty — Jesus infused it into her soul, which participated in it.
4. From heart to heart: words audible only to the heart, without any image.

When she delayed writing — out of humility when the text exalted her too much, out of fear when it concerned coming chastisements, or out of physical exhaustion — Jesus assisted her memory: “Her memory is made easy, for Jesus Himself wrote all that He entrusted to her in the depths of her soul”^[75].

Discreet mystical phenomena

To ecstasies, nightly lethargy, inedia and priestly dependence were added several mystical phenomena which Luisa strove all her life to hide and which only those who shared her daily life could verify. Father Bernardino Bucci OFMCap, nephew of Rosaria and a Capuchin, collected her testimony on October 15, 1970 — the full text circulated in the Capuchin Collections of Memoirs^[76].

These phenomena are reported not by distant disciples, but by direct witnesses, and confirmed by the diocesan inquiry conducted after 1994. None is invoked as an official miracle in the cause: Luisa herself minimized them — “If they come, I will say one prayer. If they don't come, I will say two!”^[83] — and the Church, prudently, awaits the beatification to submit them to the rigorous canonical examination.

Inedia: living on the Eucharist alone

Among all the phenomena attributed to Luisa, the most verifiable from the outside — and the most disconcerting for medicine — is her inedia: the prolonged inability to feed on anything but the Eucharist. The word comes from the Latin in-edia, literally “not-eating,” and designates in the mystical tradition a deprivation of food that brings neither the expected death nor exhaustion. Concretely, from 1888 on, Luisa ceased to assimilate any solid food: each day a little food was brought to her, which she regurgitated after a few minutes into a vessel kept permanently within reach^[84]. Her servant of forty years, Rosaria Bucci, would specify that she never drank water, but only a little almond syrup^[85].

The most singular trait, however, is not the fast itself, but the reversal of obedience it reveals. Luisa ate neither from appetite nor to subsist, but solely because her confessor ordered her to. Upon his appointment, Don Michele De Benedictis required her to take at least one meal a day, precisely so that she could not claim a total fast^[86]. Her body rejected what she swallowed out of submission; yet she compelled herself to swallow all the same, out of still greater submission. What nature refused, obedience imposed — and it was this obedience, not the prodigy of the fast, that her confessors retained as the sign.

To this near-total fast was added a physiological anomaly which Fr. Domenico Franzé, surgeon and medical consultant to the Congregation for the Cause of Saints, judged in 1931 “quite simply incredible”: after more than forty-five years of uninterrupted bedrest, no bedsores, no pressure wounds, no deterioration of the skin^[87]. The Archbishop of Trani had moreover asked that Luisa's inedia remain discreet, “so as to avoid curious crowds as with Thérèse Neumann”^[88] — proof that, already in the interwar period, ecclesiastical authority knew of the phenomenon and took it seriously, while fearing sensationalism.

Inedia in the Catholic tradition

Luisa is not an isolated case. The history of sanctity knows several figures whose subsistence on the Eucharist alone was observed, sometimes clinically, then examined within their process. The following table places Luisa among the best-documented inediates of the contemporary era, with, for each, the reported duration, the mode of verification and the canonical status recognized by the Church.

This table proves nothing by itself: the Church has never made inedia a proof of sanctity, and each case remains subject to canonical inquiry. But it places Luisa in a recognized lineage, where prolonged fasting is never sought nor exhibited — it is endured, hidden, and always ordered to the Eucharist.

The meaning of a Eucharistic sign

For such is the heart of the phenomenon: not the absence of food, but the substitution of one food for another. For these mystics, Christ's word — “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (Jn 6:55) — ceases to be a metaphor. The Eucharist literally becomes the “source and summit” of their biological as much as spiritual life. Luisa herself linked her subsistence not to a spectacular prodigy, but to her vocation as victim: her body no longer lived for itself, but for the souls she offered. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4) — in her, the formula took flesh.

The Church, faithful to her prudence, invokes none of these phenomena as an official miracle in Luisa's cause. Inedia, like the mystical perfume, the bloody sweat or the absence of bedsores, belongs to the “facts” submitted to discernment, not to the canonical proofs required for a beatification. This is a constant trait of Luisian spirituality: the prodigy is always secondary, subordinated to the one thing that counts — living in the Divine Will.

The death of her parents and family solitude (1907)

On March 13, 1907, Jesus warned Luisa that her mother, Rosa Tarantino, would die very soon. Luisa then implored the Lord to spare her mother Purgatory, “in exchange for her own sufferings.” Six days later, on March 19, 1907 — the feast of Saint Joseph — Rosa passed away in the morning^[94]. Luisa received an interior vision:

“At that moment, it seemed to me that I saw Mama inside an immense space. In this space, there were joys and delights corresponding to all the words, thoughts, gazes, works, sufferings, heartbeats, etc. of the most holy Humanity of Jesus. […] This was for my mother a most singular privilege, reserved only for a few who do not have to experience Purgatory.”^[95]

For twelve days, Luisa suffered so keenly that she believed herself to be dying, to allow her mother to reach Heaven more swiftly. Ten days later, her father Vito Nicola Piccarreta fell gravely ill; Luisa again offered her sufferings. He died on the sixteenth day. Soon after, Luisa received the vision of a church full of souls in Purgatory consoled by Masses; she then saw “Jesus placing her father near the Tabernacle”^[96].

After her parents' death, her sister Angela — who like her remained unmarried — took care of her; the three other sisters (Maria, Rachela and Filomena) were married. To cover the expenses of the house on Via Nazario Sauro, Luisa agreed to be paid for lace and liturgical ornaments destined for the church; she refused, however, any personal gift and even all income from the sale of her volumes^[97].

That same year 1907, a nine-year-old child, Rosaria Bucci, entered Luisa's service and would remain there forty years, until her death. It was she who opened her room each morning to prepare Mass, who witnessed her inedia, her blood and her perfume, and who later, as a spiritual daughter of Saint Padre Pio, would bridge the two mystics. Without Rosaria, much of the human testimony about Luisa would be lost.

The gift of prophecy and the chastisements of the century

Although cloistered, Luisa was by no means a stranger to the political and military events of the 20th century. On several occasions, Jesus announced collective events to her before they occurred — what tradition calls a gift of prophecy, distinct from doctrinal private revelation.

• 1887 — cholera epidemic. Luisa offered herself as a victim at the request of her confessor, Fr. Cosimo Di Loiodice: three days later, the scourge died out^[98].

• May 2, 1889 — Italo-Ethiopian peace. Fr. De Benedictis, worried by Luisa's inedia, ordered her to cease her state of victimhood; Jesus then announced that the war would cease when Luisa became a victim again — which occurred on May 2, 1889 through a treaty of perpetual peace^[99].

• December 28, 1908 — Messina earthquake. According to Luisa's account as reported by her biographer Hugh Owen, Jesus allegedly warned her, five hours before the catastrophe, of imminent earthquakes in Sicily and Calabria. At 5:20 in the morning, an earthquake followed by a tsunami destroyed Messina and killed more than 80,000 people. It was in that city that a young priest, Fr. Annibale Maria Di Francia, was then working, whose 150 orphans, according to the same account, were spared; he would meet Luisa for the first time two years later^[100].

• 1923 — foretelling of the Second World War, in volume 16 of the Book of Heaven. The very year Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, Jesus said to Luisa:

  “Alas, the nations are preparing the second general tribulation. […] The more they form alliances, the more they kindle discord, hatred, injustice and, thereby, force the oppressed to take up arms to defend themselves. […] How many poor people will perish! The earth needs to be purged.”^[101]

• 1915-1918 and 1939-1945 — two world wars. Luisa then intensified her intercession and offered her sufferings “so that the massacre might end”; the first edition of the Hours of the Passion appeared in 1914, one year before Italy's entry into the war (1915). According to Hugh Owen, Jesus allegedly promised her several times to spare Corato out of regard for her; the town did in fact pass through both conflicts almost unscathed — a parallel the biographers draw with San Giovanni Rotondo under Padre Pio's protection, without this parallel constituting historical proof^[102].

• Vision on divorce in Italy. In the Book of Heaven, Luisa reports having seen the drafting of a law “iniquitous against men themselves and against their own social well-being,” and that Jesus allegedly asked her to offer her sufferings for those fighting it^[103]. Her readers connect this passage with the legalization of divorce in Italy (Fortuna-Baslini law, 1970) — a connection that belongs to their reading, not to historical proof.

This gift of prophecy was never spectacular nor preached: it shows through in the diary, muted, like a running thread of active intercessory prayer. That is why the inhabitants of Corato, already in the interwar period, simply called her “la Santa” (the Saint).

Successive confessors (1874-1947)

For nearly sixty years of bedrest, Luisa was totally dependent on priests: without the daily intervention of a confessor — who had to trace a sign of the cross on her hand “by virtue of holy obedience” — her body remained petrified and impossible to move. Jesus Himself revealed to her that this dependence was not an accident, but an integral part of her mission: “the greater the Work I wish to accomplish, the more necessary it is for the chosen creature to be treated exceptionally”^[104]. This is what makes the list of her successive confessors so important — each was, in his own way, a privileged witness of the mystic and a guarantor of the ecclesial obedience within which Luisa always wished to remain.

To these six regular confessors must be added Saint Annibale Maria di Francia (1851-1927), who from 1908 on — appointed extraordinary reviser by Archbishop Carrano — was her personal confessor and her ecclesiastical censor — nineteen years, until his death on June 1, 1927 — that is, the one who officially examined the writings before publication to obtain the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur. This function is distinct from the ordinary confessor (charged with daily spiritual direction and the bodily release of Luisa) and will be detailed in the following section.

Father Annibale and Luisa (1910-1927)

Saint Annibale Maria di Francia began his visits to Luisa in 1910. He was first part of a free association of priests sharing a desire for holiness and a deep admiration for Luisa: among them were also Father Gennaro Braccale, Father Eustachio Montemuro (founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart) and Father Ferdinando Cento, the future cardinal^[111].

Father Annibale then became her extraordinary confessor, then her appointed ecclesiastical censor^[112]. Although everything seemed to set them apart — Annibale came from a noble and wealthy family, was a remarkable poet, a renowned preacher and an apostle of priestly vocations^[113]; Luisa was a peasant woman, uneducated, bedridden — they shared the essential: a great love of God, of the Eucharist, and total submission to the Divine Will. Father Annibale's motto was “Fall in love with Jesus Christ.” At his canonization on May 16, 2004, Saint John Paul II reprised it in his homily:

It is this same invitation that Father Annibale Maria Di Francia addresses to the young people of our time, summing it up in his famous exhortation: “Fall in love with Jesus Christ.”^[114]

Father Annibale devoted meticulous care to Luisa's writings. He published four editions of the Hours of the Passion between 1914 and 1925, with Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur from the Archbishop of Trani. In 1926, he edited and published the first nineteen volumes of Luisa's Diary, with Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur from Archbishop Joseph Leo^[115]. He required of Luisa that she withhold “nothing” of what happened between Jesus and her, asking her to write every day, every night, with total precision^[116].

The more Father Annibale immersed himself in the volumes, the more he built his own spiritual life on their doctrines. He wrote to Luisa:

“I see in them a sublime and Divine Science, although my lack of intelligence has not yet allowed me to penetrate them perfectly. It is truly necessary to make these writings known to the whole world and I believe they will do much good. […] In my opinion, no human intelligence could have conceived them.”^[117]

During his final years, Fr. Annibale — exhausted, ill, prey to “interior spiritual desolation” — described in his letters to Luisa the intensity of the spiritual combat the devil waged against the publication. On January 24, 1927: “I would shock you were I to tell you how the infernal enemy trampled me to destroy me while I was doing this work. For the moment, I have had to suspend it. Without particular help from Our Lord, I will not be able to continue”^[118]. On February 14, 1927: “I feel within me abandonments and interior desolations, deep anxieties — in short, an interior state of such anguish and suffering as I have never known before. […] It seems to me that the demons are enraged because they see me involved in this publication; and unable to act on me exteriorly, because I do not walk on those paths, they act interiorly to destroy me”^[119]. On March 24, 1927: “The enemy suggests to me: ‘Do you not see that this Publication is leading you to the tomb? Why did you get involved in this?'”^[120]

In the same correspondence, Fr. Annibale also demanded of Luisa absolute fidelity to the dictation: “All for Holy Obedience, great Lady […]. Take care to distort or hide nothing!” (August 28, 1926)^[121]. He also insisted on editorial prudence: “One must consider how many times […] Our Lord repeats to you to be attentive to writing faithfully what He reveals, so that the meaning of what He says is not altered; and that a different word, one comma more or one fewer, or displaced, can modify it, even involuntarily” (October 5, 1926)^[122].

Beyond publishing, Fr. Annibale worked to found the “Universal Pious Union of the Daughters and Sons of the Divine Will,” a lay and religious movement whose sole commitment would have been to recite five times a day “Thy Will be done on earth as in Heaven”^[123]. Death prevented him from bringing this project to completion.

In February 1927, gravely ill to the point of no longer being able to celebrate Mass, he declared: “I want to do His Will. The Will of the Lord surpasses everything, including Mass.” He died on June 1, 1927, without realizing his great desire to publish all of Luisa's volumes^[124].

The diagnosis of Fr. Domenico Franzé (1931)

Three years after Fr. Annibale's death, at the request of Father Pantaleone Palma, a new theologian examined Luisa's writings and person in depth: Fr. Domenico Franzé OFM, a rare profile combining surgeon, professor of physiology, missionary, honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of Missions in Rome and medical consultant to the Congregation for the Cause of Saints^[125]. In 1931, then sixty-five years old, he thoroughly studied the volumes, solicited the opinion of other competent theologians, then traveled to Corato to subject Luisa to a battery of tests “of a moral, physical and psychological order.” His letter of July 20, 1931 to Fr. Palma delivered four fundamental observations:

“As a physician, it is quite simply incredible not to have found the slightest trace of bedsores on the patient, nor any deterioration of the skin in a person bedridden and immobilized for so many years.”^[126]

“As a consultant for the Congregation for the Cause of Saints, it is comforting to have the assurance that after so many years of exhaustive studies, the doctors, confessors and archbishops of the diocese never discovered the slightest suspicion of deception or fraud.”^[127]

“As a priest, I am filled with joy at having found in the patient not only all the delicate integrity of the Christian virtues, but also a soul tending to perfection, illuminated by a special grace.”^[128]

“Only a soul so continually mortified, only a human will fused with the Divine Will, can attain concepts so primordial and fundamental as those manifested for this soul. Without thorough studies and without education, alone in the bed of her suffering and martyrdom, with the most limited literary, theological and ascetic culture, she speaks of the most profound questions with true competence.”^[129]

To this letter, Fr. Franzé appended a parallel testimony from Fr. Consalvo Valls OFM, professor of dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Antonianum University in Rome and delegated examiner for the revision of the Friars Minor's books. His conclusion (June 18, 1931):

“I am profoundly convinced that the person in question is a soul of God and that the work being accomplished in her is divine.”^[130]

This double examination, medico-theological, conducted by men of the Holy See in the middle of the 1930s — only a few years before the Index decree — weighs heavily in the doctrinal dossier. It also makes all the more intelligible Archbishop Cassati's choice, sixty years later, to open the cause for beatification.

The time of persecutions (1928-1947)

In 1928, at the request of Father Annibale (deceased a year earlier), Luisa was transferred to the convent of the Daughters of Divine Zeal in Corato, nicknamed the “House of the Divine Will” and opened on October 7, 1928 by Father Pantaleone Palma, Superior General of the Rogationists. The sisters warmly welcomed Luisa. Between 1926 and 1938, tens of thousands of people became acquainted with Luisa's writings^[131].

At the same time, Luisa's enemies quietly orchestrated a campaign of discredit with the Holy See. On July 13, 1938, the Holy Office published a decree condemning three works; Pope Pius XI approved the decision the next day^[132].

Under this avalanche, Luisa wrote, for the only time in her life, to Padre Pio, the stigmatized Capuchin of San Giovanni Rotondo (who had himself undergone a similar persecution from 1931 to 1933, stripped of almost all his priestly faculties). Learning of the condemnation, Padre Pio exclaimed:

“There are those who make saints; but woe to those who make them!”^[133]

On October 7, 1938, Luisa had to leave the House of the Divine Will — where she had lived for exactly ten years — and moved into an apartment on Via Maddalena, in central Corato. On December 28, 1938, the obligation to write under obedience was withdrawn from her — end of her Diary at the thirty-sixth volume, on a meditation on Mary's motherhood. She would no longer leave her body until her death, and would no longer see Jesus physically, although He continued to teach her interiorly. She even lost for a year the permission to see her confessor Don Calvi^[134]. Luisa wrote to a friend:

“Nevertheless, no one can take me out of the Divine Will. It is there that I find everything, even Holy Mass.”^[135]

During the Second World War, Jesus allegedly, according to Luisa's account as reported by Owen, promised several times to spare Corato out of regard for her. The town did in fact pass through the war almost unscathed — just like San Giovanni Rotondo, protected according to its inhabitants by Padre Pio^[136]. Many visitors came to seek out Luisa: the Archbishop of Poland worried about his country, families seeking news of loved ones at the front, sick people who obtained healings through her prayers (notably Gino Bartolomeo, the neighbor of the child with the injured foot). The inhabitants of Corato called her “la Santa” — but Luisa discouraged this devotion: “If they come, I will say one prayer. If they don't come, I will say two!”^[137]

Death and funeral (1947)

In February 1947, at 81, Luisa caught pneumonia — the first real illness of her life in nearly sixty years of mystical seclusion. For two weeks, the illness worsened. On March 4, 1947 at 5 in the morning, in the presence of her confessor Don Benedetto Calvi, Luisa spoke her final words:

“I die now happier, for the Divine Will has consoled me more than usual by your presence in these last moments of my life. I now see a long, marvelous and spacious road illuminated by infinite and resplendent suns… it is the road prepared for me by the Divine Will. […] It is the road I will reserve for souls who desire to live in the Divine Will.”^[138]

Don Calvi described the body:

“Her body had remained inflexibly straight, seated on her bed, the limbs totally free of cadaveric rigidity and able to be moved in all directions. Her eyes had kept the brightness of their pupils. This made us doubt whether she was truly dead, which is why we showed her to several medical experts. She remained in this state, without any sign of decomposition, for four whole days. The entire town and a multitude of strangers came to see her and marveled at the body with great devotion, kissing her flexible hands.”^[139]

Her seated position required the construction of an entirely custom-made coffin, closed under glass so that her body would remain visible. Her funeral, on March 7, 1947 at the Church of the Assumption in Corato, gathered some forty priests, the local clergy, many religious sisters, and the town's entire population. Don Calvi wrote:

“The funeral? A true triumph. No one went to work that day. […] It was a great manifestation of sorrow, but also of great joy. And from her coffin, showing herself to all, although her eyelids were closed, she seemed to bless the whole town that accompanied her to her final resting place.”^[140]

Don Calvi obtained that Luisa's body be buried in his own family chapel at the Corato cemetery — so as to remain united in the life of the Divine Will and in death. On March 12, 1947, only eight days after her death, he wrote to a correspondent:

“Luisa is no longer among us. She is in Heaven in the immense Light of the Divine Will, glorious and triumphant in the glory of the Saints. I was with her at the last moment… she died in my arms as I pronounced my last and useless absolution! She died as Saints die, accomplishing the last act of her life in the Divine Will. […] A Saint has died.”^[141]

He would later describe her bed as “a marvelous seat of wisdom and divine unction,” from which “she spoke and intimately changed souls”; for the inhabitants of Corato, Luisa was “our lightning rod against Divine Justice, already so inflamed by the human will that so offends God”^[142].

Almost at once, the inhabitants of Corato and those who knew her writings began to ask for her intercession. From 1948 on, cards bearing prayers for her beatification began to circulate, with Nihil Obstat.

On June 3, 1962, at the request of Don Calvi and Cardinal Ferdinando Cento (Archbishop of Trani and former member of the circle of holy priests around Luisa), the Holy See authorized the transfer of her body from the cemetery to a place of honor in the church of Santa Maria Greca in Corato, to the right of the central nave, where it still rests today.

Luisa Piccarreta's corpus comprises three major works, all approved by ecclesiastical authority during her lifetime^[143]:

• The Book of Heaven (Il Libro del Cielo) — thirty-six volumes written between 1899 and 1938, containing the intimate dialogues between Jesus and Luisa, her meditations on the Passion, her visions, and the progressive teaching on the gift of living in the Divine Will.
• The Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (L'Orologio della Passione) — twenty-four meditations covering the last earthly hours of Christ. This work was reprinted four times in Italian during Luisa's lifetime, a sign of its broad ecclesial reception.
• The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will (1932) — a thirty-one-day meditation on the life of the Mother of the Savior and her role as Queen of the Kingdom of the Divine Will^[144].

Saint Annibale Maria di Francia, her canonized spiritual director

Saint Annibale Maria di Francia (1851-1927), Italian priest, founder of the Rogationists of the Heart of Jesus, was Luisa's appointed spiritual director and censor librorum during her final years. It was he who, by ecclesial obedience, ordered her in 1926 to write her autobiography. It was he who edited and granted his Nihil Obstat to the first nineteen manuscript volumes of the Book of Heaven^[145].

Annibale di Francia was beatified on October 7, 1990 by Saint John Paul II, then canonized on May 16, 2004 by the same pope — who thus presents him to the universal Church as a model of sanctity^[146]. It would be theologically incoherent to suspect of heresy a work whose appointed spiritual director, official publisher and ecclesiastical censor was a canonized saint.

Saint Annibale wrote to Luisa, after meditating on her volumes:

“I see in them a sublime and divine Science […] These are writings that must now be brought to the knowledge of the world.”^[147]

The 11 seals of ecclesiastical approval

According to the official chronology published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana (the Holy See's publisher) in the reference work The Sun of My Will — Luisa Piccarreta by Maria Rosaria Del Genio, Luisa Piccarreta's writings received, during Luisa's lifetime and after, at least eleven distinct official ecclesiastical seals of approval, granted by several archbishops, bishops and ecclesiastical delegates^[148]. Probably no other mystic of her time received such a profusion of approvals.

Exhaustive list of the 11 seals of approval, in chronological order^[149]:

1. August 6, 1926 — Nihil Obstat of Saint Annibale Maria di Francia, confessor and designated censor librorum. He personally placed his Nihil Obstat on the 19 first manuscript volumes of Luisa's Diary.

2. September-October 1926 — Imprimatur of Archbishop Giuseppe Maria Leo of Trani, on those same 19 volumes.

3. 1930 — Imprimatur of Archbishop Giuseppe Maria Leo on the book In the Kingdom of the Divine Will.

4. 1932 — Imprimatur of Archbishop Giuseppe Battignani, Bishop of Montepulciano (Siena), on the 1st edition of The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will.

5. October 1933 — Nihil Obstat of the archiepiscopal delegate of Taranto on the 2nd edition of The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will (edited by Fr. Benedetto Calvi).

6. October 1933 — Imprimatur of the archiepiscopal delegate of Taranto on the same 2nd edition, published by the archdiocesan publishing house S.T.A.T. of Taranto.

7. 1934 — Nihil Obstat of the archiepiscopal delegate of Taranto on the 5th edition of the Hours of the Passion.

8. November 24, 1937 (feast of Christ the King) — Nihil Obstat of the archiepiscopal delegate of Taranto on the 3rd edition of The Virgin Mary in the Kingdom of the Divine Will.

9. November 24, 1937 — Imprimatur of the archiepiscopal delegate of Taranto on that same 3rd edition.

10. February 24-25, 1994 — Non Obstare of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (Cardinal Angelo Felici, Prefect), granted to Archbishop Carmelo Cassati to open the diocesan inquiry (official letter of February 24, 1994, declaration dated February 25, 1994); confirmed by Cardinal Felici's letter of March 28, 1994.

11. June 2024 — Nulla Osta of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for the continuation of the cause, noting no doctrinal error in the writings. Confirmed by the letter of December 3, 2024 from Archbishop Philippe Curbelié, Under-Secretary of the Dicastery, addressed to Archbishop Benoît Bertrand, President of the Doctrinal Commission of the French Bishops' Conference.

Total: 6 Nihil Obstat (including the 2024 Nulla Osta) + 5 Imprimatur, not counting the pontifical indulgences of Leo XIII and Saint Pius X nor the successive pontifical rescripts.

The letter of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (December 3, 2024)

On December 3, 2024, Archbishop Philippe Curbelié, titular Archbishop of Utica and Under-Secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed an official letter (Prot. N. 94/37 — 102675) addressed to Archbishop Benoît Bertrand, President of the Doctrinal Commission of the French Bishops' Conference. Its central passage states:

“As you know, in June 2024, this Dicastery granted its Nulla Osta for the continuation of the Cause of Beatification and Canonization of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, finding no doctrinal error in her writings such as would prevent their dissemination.”^[150]

The Dicastery warned, however, against the “uncontrolled proliferation” of Luisa's writings after her death, “often translated and manipulated with heterodox interpretations,” and against certain “movements, associations and Divine Will Groups sometimes marked by inconsiderate devotion to the Servant of God.” The denounced risk therefore concerns not Luisa's writings themselves (declared free of doctrinal error) but their distorted interpretations by third parties. To remedy this, the Dicastery asked the Postulator of the Cause, in collaboration with the Archbishop of Trani-Barletta-Bisceglie, to oversee the official, typical and critical edition of Luisa Piccarreta's writings, with a suitable introduction and pedagogical notes^[151].

Continuity with the Magisterium

Luisa's work stands in perfect continuity with the 20th-century pontifical Magisterium:

• Saint John XXIII, in the apostolic constitution Humanae salutis of December 25, 1961, announced a “novum veluti Pentecostem” — a new Pentecost — an expression Saint John Paul II would reprise on several occasions (general audience of April 4, 1998, Pentecost homily of June 3, 2001)^[152]. This “new Pentecost” echoes the “Fiat of Sanctification” announced to Luisa.
• Vatican II (Lumen Gentium, chapter V) proclaims the universal call to holiness — converging with the Luisian spirituality of Living in the Divine Will^[153].
• At the heart of Luisa's teaching lies the second petition of the Our Father taught by Christ Himself: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To ask that this be prayed while refusing that it could come about would be contradictory.

The work also converges with that of other mystics approved by the Church: Saint Faustina Kowalska (canonized in 2000), Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Blessed Dina Bélanger, Venerable Concepción Cabrera de Armida^[154].

Contemporary academic support

The theology underlying Luisa's writings has undergone rigorous academic examination:

• November 22, 2012 — Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi defended at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome a doctoral thesis entitled The Gift of Living in the Divine Will in the Writings of Luisa Piccarreta, with the mention magnum cum laude. The thesis bears the official seals of the university authorized by the Holy See^[155].
• 2013 — With the permission of the Pontifical University, the thesis was published and sent to the Vatican Dicasteries (Doctrine of the Faith, Causes of Saints) as well as to the 494 Catholic bishops of the United States. That same year, more than 45 bishops expressed in writing their esteem for the thesis, including Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle^[156].

Humility and obedience before the Index (1938)

On July 13, 1938, the Holy Office placed three editions of Luisa's writings on the *Index librorum prohibitorum*PLACEHOLDER___P183_PLACEHOLDER__. Her immediate reaction is one of the strongest arguments for the sanctity of her soul: as soon as she learned of the condemnation, Luisa wrote to her Archbishop Archbishop Joseph Leo a declaration of unconditional obedience, which she begged him to transmit to the Holy Office:

“With humility, I have spontaneously and promptly fulfilled my duties as a Christian soul by offering without hesitation my absolute, full and unconditional submission to the judgment of Holy Roman Church. Without any restriction, I therefore disapprove of and condemn all that the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office disapproves of and condemns in the said books, in the same sense and with the same intention as the Sacred Congregation. I submit at the same time this declaration to my beloved Archbishop Giuseppe M. Leo, praying him in his fatherly charity to remit it to the Holy Office.”^[157]

Archbishop Joseph Leo himself would specify that this declaration was not even necessary: only the three condemned editions were targeted by the decree, and the thirty-four volumes of Luisa's Diary were not condemned. This figure is explained by the date: on May 11, 1938, on the order of an envoy of the Holy Office, Luisa had handed over the thirty-four volumes of her Diary then completed — volume 35 had just been finished and was hidden, volume 36 was begun and would not be completed until December 28, 1938^[158]. The “thirty-four volumes” not condemned in 1938 and the “thirty-six volumes” of the complete work therefore designate the same work at two different moments. But Luisa, out of heroic humility, chose to hold back nothing: she submitted “without any restriction,” “in the same sense and with the same intention” as the Congregation.

For nearly sixty years — from 1888 until her death in 1947 — Luisa remained subject to the unceasing discernment of the Church's representatives: her nightly paralysis could only be lifted by a priest's intervention, her life as a writer depended on her confessor's order. Jesus Himself explained it to her:

“My daughter, the greater the Work I wish to accomplish, the more necessary it is for the chosen creature to be treated exceptionally. […] There have been no other creatures before you and there will be none after you who, by necessity, have been provided to this extent with the assistance of My ministers. […] As for My ministers, they must receive these things from you, so that the ‘Fiat Voluntas Tua' on earth as in Heaven may be realized in My Church.”^[159]

This total submission to ecclesial authority, in the very heart of the harshest persecution, will manifest the heroicity of the virtues examined in the cause^[160] — and constitutes, independently of the doctrinal analysis of the writings, overwhelming testimony in favor of the personal sanctity of Luisa Piccarreta.

The testimony of Saint Padre Pio

Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968), stigmatized Capuchin of San Giovanni Rotondo and one of the greatest saints of the 20th century, knew Luisa Piccarreta and esteemed her deeply, although they never met (Luisa bedridden in Corato, Padre Pio enclosed in his convent). The testimony is reported by Fr. Bernardino Bucci, Capuchin, nephew of Rosaria Bucci — a laywoman of Corato who was Luisa's intimate friend and Padre Pio's spiritual daughter^[161].

Padre Pio sent the faithful to Luisa. To the inhabitants of Corato who came to visit him in San Giovanni Rotondo, he said:

“What are you doing here — you have Luisa, go to her.”^[162]

It was through Federico Abresch (a convert become apostle of the Divine Will) that Padre Pio conveyed several messages to Luisa. At the condemnation of the three editions by the Holy Office in 1938 — while Padre Pio himself was going through the worst period of his ecclesiastical persecution — he sent her this message of fraternity:

“Dear Luisa, saints serve for the good of souls, but their sufferings have no limits.”^[163]

But the most striking testimony is the one which, according to Rosaria Bucci's account collected by Fr. Bernardino Bucci, Padre Pio confided to her. When he saw her during Luisa's lifetime, he asked her: “Rosa, how is Luisa?”. And later, encouraging her to testify for the cause, he allegedly spoke this sentence in the Apulian dialect:

“Rosa, va nanz, va nanz ca Luisa iè gran e u munn sarà chin di Luisa.” (“Rosaria, go on, go on. Luisa is great and the world will be full of our Luisa.”)^[164]

More explicitly still, still according to this reported testimony, Padre Pio allegedly declared to Rosaria Bucci — notably in confession:

“Luisa is not a human fact, she is a work of God. He Himself will bring her forth and her greatness will astound the entire earth; we must wait a few years before this happens. The new millennium will see the light of Luisa.”^[165]

This saying, which Rosaria Bucci places in the 1960s, is read by those close to the cause as illuminated by the following steps: the opening of the cause in 1994 (after the Non Obstare of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints) and the letter of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of December 3, 2024 noting “no doctrinal error.” This is a reading by witnesses, not proof: the testimony remains second-hand, transmitted by Rosaria Bucci and Fr. Bernardino Bucci, and cannot be presented as a fulfilled prophecy^[166].

The legacy of Padre Pio's esteem for Luisa is said today, according to the same collection of testimonies, to be carried by Miss Adriana Pallotti (spiritual daughter of the saint), who opened a House of the Divine Will in San Giovanni Rotondo to spread Luisa Piccarreta's spirituality throughout the world^[167].

The cause for the beatification of Luisa Piccarreta is handled by the Archdiocese of Trani-Barletta-Bisceglie (Italy). It has passed through several stages:

• November 20, 1994 — Official opening by Archbishop Carmelo Cassati^[168].
• March 1997 — On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Luisa's death, it was publicly announced that the diocesan tribunal had unanimously found the heroicity of her virtues and the authenticity of her mystical experiences^[169].
• October 29, 2005 — Smooth closing of the diocesan phase; the Positio super virtutibus (complete dossier on her life, virtues and reputation for sanctity) was transmitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome^[170].
• November 2019 — Temporary refusal of the doctrinal nihil obstat, due to questions raised by theologians — a one-off step that did not close the cause^[171].
• June 2024 — New Nulla Osta of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, noting the absence of doctrinal error in the writings^[172].
• December 3, 2024 — Official letter of confirmation to the French episcopate^[173].

The cause continues today under the responsibility of the Postulator, in coordination with the Archbishop of Trani-Barletta-Bisceglie, in the direction set by the Dicastery's letter: critical edition of the works and transmission of a faithful interpretation of the historical and charismatic figure of the Servant of God^[174].

• The gift of the Divine Will
• The Book of Heaven
• The 24 Hours of the Passion
• Saint Annibale Maria di Francia
• Father Joseph Iannuzzi
• Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur