Vittorio Messori
Vittorio Messori | |
|---|---|
 Messori in 2004 | |
| Born | 16 April 1941 |
| Died | 3 April 2026 (aged 84) Desenzano del Garda, Italy |
| Education | Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio at Turin |
| Alma mater | University of Turin |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse |
Rosanna Brichetti
(m. 1996; died 2022) |
| Signature | |
 | |
Vittorio Messori (16 April 1941 – 3 April 2026) was an Italian journalist and Catholic writer.[2][3]
Biography
[edit]Messori was born on April 16, 1941, in Sassuolo, in the province of Modena, into an anticlerical family. His father, Enzo, a poet in the Modena dialect, after three years in the Royal Italian Army, joined the Littorio Division of the Italian Social Republic and, following a period of training in Germany, fought on the Western Alps front against the French Army. Meanwhile, the family had taken refuge in the Brescia area, from where, after the end of World War II, they moved to Turin, settling in Borgo San Donato, in a building at number 18 Via Sobrero. Here his father found work at the general management of Italgas.
Messori attended public schools in Turin. After graduating from the Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio, he enrolled in the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Turin, where he acquired a rationalist and agnostic education. He graduated in 1965 with a thesis on the history of the Risorgimento (supervisor: Alessandro Galante Garrone) and with two other complementary works defended with Luigi Firpo and Norberto Bobbio.[4]
But a year before graduating in July 1964, while reading the Gospel, Messori converted to Catholic Christianity. As he himself said, "I was converted by an unexpected and irresistible force". In that experience which he defined as an "evidence of the heart". Conversion to Christianity was fulcrum of his life. Messori, after his Christian conversion, became a passionate researcher into the reasons for faith.[5]
Messori died in his house in Desenzano del Garda on 3 April 2026, at the age of 84.[6]
Private life
[edit]After having a previous marriage declared null by the Roman Catholic Church, in 1996 he was able to marry Rosanna Brichetti, whom he had met thirty years earlier within a community of faith and love. The couple had no children.[7]
Works
[edit]- The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (1985)
References
[edit]- ↑ "Rosanna Brichetti, chi è la moglie morta di Vittorio Messori - Il matrimonio dopo 20 anni di attesa". ilsussidiario.net (in Italian). 4 April 2026. Retrieved 5 April 2026.
- ↑ "È morto lo scrittore e giornalista Vittorio Messori". rainews.it (in Italian). 3 April 2026. Retrieved 5 April 2026.
- ↑ "Scrittori, morto a 84 anni Vittorio Messori: portò Cristo al centro dibattito culturale". tg24.sky.it (in Italian). 4 April 2026. Retrieved 5 April 2026.
- ↑ Francesco Cevasco, Articolo, Corriere della Sera, 29 July 2000.
- ↑ "Messori, appassionato indagatore delle ragioni della fede". vaticannews.va (in Italian). 3 April 2026. Retrieved 5 April 2026.
- ↑ "E' morto Vittorio Messori, lo scrittore cattolico delle 'Ipotesi su Gesù'". ansa.it (in Italian). 5 April 2026. Retrieved 5 April 2026.
- ↑ "Io e Messori, la grazia di un'amicizia". lanuovabq.it (in Italian).
External links
[edit]- Home page of Vittorio Messori – in Italian.
- Vittorio Messori review of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"
- Interview with Messori about anti-catholic provocations (pdf), in Il Giornale, 23 June 2007
- Vittorio Messori at IMDb
- 1941 births
- 2026 deaths
- 21st-century Italian journalists
- 21st-century Italian male journalists
- 20th-century Italian non-fiction writers
- 20th-century Italian male non-fiction writers
- Italian Roman Catholic writers
- 21st-century Roman Catholics
- Converts to Roman Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism
- Italian former atheists and agnostics
- Italian investigative journalists
- Italian newspaper journalists
- People from Sassuolo
- University of Turin alumni