Maria Valtorta was originally quite an ordinary Italian woman who adored God from early childhood. Due to an accident, she got bedridden and developed an even deeper faith. She received the grace to see visions of the life of Jesus. She wrote down everything she saw in great detail – in total, around 15,000 pages. She made no corrections to her writings and did all this under great difficulties of the ongoing World War II.

In addition, worth knowing from my point of view:

• Valtorta’s mother was “religiously indifferent.” Against the wishes of her mother, Maria turned to religion very early and took the vows of poverty, obedience and virginity
• Mary both received dictations from Jesus and had visions that she describes in her books. She describes the visions in great detail with fauna and flora, moods, etc. Visions as opposed to dictations, are, therefore subjective representations of events
• Maria Valtorta had no self-interest or financial gain in writing or publishing her works. Her confessor urged her to publish a version, and eventually she gave in, however she insisted that her name not be mentioned
• After her death, several visitors noticed that her right hand, with which she had written down her dictations and visions, literally “shone”