Preface to the first edition

(from mons. Alessandro Perego)

I am glad to satisfy the proposal, that the managers of Association Sposa di Sion did to me, to write few words to introduce the present book, which is titled Vidi scendere la Sposa. Apparitions and messages of Mary Bride of the Family.
I couldn’t refuse this assignment also because I still keep in my mind the vivid and pleasant memory of father Pietro Fumagalli, such a humble and great person. He was the priest of the parish Santa Croce in Mazzo di Rho for many years and he was the inventor-designer-maker of the church dedicated to Mary Help of Christians, located in the same parish. This church is the place where, in July 2005, began the messages given by the Virgin Mary Bride of the Family in favour of the Church and the world.
In the academic year 1979/80, as a student at his second year of theology, I was assigned to give support to the parish of Mazzo during weekends and the summer. For this reason, I had the lucky chance to know and appreciate father Pietro Fumagalli, both as a man and as a priest.
I remember that father Pietro confided to me his desire and his plan to build a church dedicated to Our Lady, within the parish’s borders.
Every day his will to build a particular place shone through his thoughts and deeds. A place where God’s community could have gathered and from which the faith’s capability to heal could have radiated. Father Pietro was familiar with the fact that faith heals. For the major part of his life he contributed to heal people through his priestly testimony and also through his activity as doctor-herbalist, that he carried on with great dedication and whose reputation spread beyond national borders.
After my brief experience in the parish of Mazzo in 1979/80, I haven’t had any other occasion to meet father Pietro nor to talk with him. My life developed on unexpected paths, that led me to live Church’s experience in different places and nations: Germany, United States of America, Tanzania, Italy (Rome).
Only recently, more or less a month ago, I came back to Mazzo di Rho, thanks to a bunch of circumstances that could be defined “fortuitous”. In that occasion I could see the fulfilment father Pietro’s dream and life plan, that is the church dedicated to Mary Help of Christians. In this church father Pietro’s expectations realized, perhaps beyond his wishes.
The encounter with the managers of the Association Sposa di Sion gave me the opportunity to approach the phenomenon of the messages that the Virgin Mary communicates, for the most part exactly in the church Mary Help of Christians, to the whole Church since July 2005.
I read immediately the messages published in this book.
What really strikes me about these messages is: their exceptional clarity and intelligibility; their adherence with reality; the references to delicate and/or urgent facts or situations, that make us think and incite us to a tangible response; the harmony with the biblical tradition of Ancient and New Testament; their adherence with Church’s theology, tradition and teachings; the love for Israelite people and Christianity’s Jewish roots; their Christocentrism; the love for Church and the pope; the desire for peace and the antidote for achieving a real and lasting peace in the world; the urgency of becoming aware of the truth that Devil works in the world and how to carry out an effective struggle against the Devil himself; the continuous and pressing call for a real change of life according to the Gospel; the attention and the support to offer to society’s outcasts; the call to found cohesive Christian communities on the example of the communities of the New Testament.
The messages are without any kind of “spiritualism” and they are placed in the heart of the most urgent problems of contemporary society. For example, I would just mention the problem related to the breaking up of families and to all of its ill-fated consequences, to say the least.
Personally, I see this problem with my own eyes everyday due to the work I carry out, in close contact with procedures of marriage nullity at the Tribunal of the Roman Rota. Exactly for this reason, I really rejoice and I feel consoled about the fact that in these messages the Virgin Mary reveals herself as “Bride of the Family”, as the one who comes “acting as collaborator” and offers the means to solve that rough problem to everyone who wishes it. The means of a total conversion to God and of the “sentire cum Ecclesia”, that is being in harmony with the Church and having an attitude marked by obedience. Surely, the reading of the messages of the Virgin Bride of the Family will raise soon the question: “shall we really believe in the revelations of these messages?”.
I encourage readers to not pose oneself this question immediately, but only at the end of the reading of the whole book, if it is necessary. I think that the beauty of these messages, above all, consist of the newness and the freshness of their content. Personally, I am sure about the truth of the revelations of the Virgin Bride of the Family, because I find in them some authenticity criteria that are essential and necessary to this kind of revelations, such as the harmony with Holy Writings and Church’s Teachings. However, this opinion is just my personal belief and absolutely I do not pretend to forestall the right and proper discernment that the ecclesiastical authority in charge has to carry on, in the next years or decades, in order to express its “binding” opinion about the reality of what the Church considers as “private revelations”.
For the moment, I verify with pleasure that the experience of the messages of the Virgin Bride of the Family is already giving clear evidences of a positive response in faith and tangible life.
According to me, the rule of life that the Association Sposa di Sion adopted and tries to follow and the activities that the Association carries out, in favour of families and the neediest people, are a reliable starting point. It radiates from this point that force which makes faith the only reality for that it is worth to live. The tree is known by its own fruit.
To all of those who will take this book, I wish a good reading and a spirit that is free and open to perceive “the new” which God still does nowadays in His Church.

Rome, October 2011

Mons. Alessandro Perego
Promoter of Justice at the Apostolic Tribunal
of the Roman Rota