‘The Sacred Heart can heal every wound.’

A young man of only 23 who speaks about the Sacred Heart of Jesus and its benefits as if he were a priest with many years of experience and study. He is Manuel Gregori, author of the book Fuoco e misericordia (Fire and mercy, Ares, Milan 2025), who at first glance seems no different from his peers. He dresses, talks and jokes (with a Roman accent) like any other young man his age, although what sets him apart from the average young person today is a contagious strength, a sunny disposition, a joy for life, for building, for doing, for imagining a life spent for the greater good. So what is the secret of Manuel, who, with shining eyes, speaks of suffering and redemption as if he had already lived a very long life? ‘The Madonnina, she educated us, but not only that.’ The ‘Madonnina’ is the one from Civitavecchia, who in 1995 wept tears of blood in the Gregori home, a few years before Manuel was born. The first to see them was his sister Jessica, then a child, and the whole family was also the recipient of Marian apparitions and messages.

What does it mean that the Madonna raised you, Manuel, and what does it have to do with the book you wrote?
I wanted to tell everyone that contemplating the Sacred Heart of Jesus can heal every wound and bring peace to people today. I know this because I was born into a family that had the gift of receiving, even before I was born, a statue of Our Lady that wept tears of blood, but which also suffered greatly because of this. I have experienced the power of the weapons that Our Lady gave us, telling us more than 20 years ago how to avert the nuclear war that was upon us and our personal wars: the Rosary, Eucharistic Adoration, offering, the love of her Son, and consecration to her Heart.

In summary, what happened?
In addition to the tears of the statue, my family has received more than ninety messages from Mary and secrets. Every member of my family has seen Our Lady and has had mystical experiences. We have suffered a lot, but with her at our side, we have understood that suffering offered to the Heart of Jesus brings joy. The statue of Our Lady here wept blood for the Church, which she said was close to apostasy, and for a world at war.

How do you live in the light of these events?
I love life! I was an opera singer, I studied for eight years at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, I sang in Spain for the royal family and I won competitions. I was president of the Civitavecchia Youth City Council, an advisory body to the municipality, and I was also in the newspapers because I fought against the “gender ideology” that was entering our schools. Now I am about to graduate in law and I am part of an association that deals with public administration. I also work for the city's port, where I am responsible for cruise ship tour guides. Finally, I write.

What else have you written besides this book?
I self-published a book on Our Lady and Oltre le Stelle (Beyond the Stars), which is a spiritual journey dedicated to teenagers written in simple language, in which I show why it is beautiful to pray and encounter Jesus. My moral theology professor at Lumsa, who is also a parish priest, bought 300 copies for his students and told me that they found it helpful. This makes me very happy.

It is no coincidence that in your latest book you say that the Sacred Heart sends us as “apostles of His Love in a world wounded by loneliness, division and violence, to bring light”.
In a time of war and unrest, God is trying hard to reach our hearts because He wants to give us His Heart so that He can give us peace. We young people are bombarded with temptations. We live in a world that convinces us that everything it offers us is for our happiness, but unfortunately it is all a collection of fleeting pleasures that satisfy us at first but then leave us with disappointment and the darkness of depression. It is the difference between the natural light of God, which is inexhaustible, and artificial light: when the bulb breaks, you are left in darkness. But the deception is such that we have come to accept that we ourselves are commodities in the hands of a power that makes money off our backs. We want to have, have, have, and we are never happy. Jesus, on the other hand, says the opposite: abandon everything and take up your cross, not to die, but to have salvation and glory. This is what I want to communicate, because I have seen that it is true.

But where is your suffering in all this and what does Jesus have to do with it?
I come from a family with a very important history. I was born about seven years after the first supernatural events, yet I was severely bullied, just like my brothers. I suffered violent persecution, even physical. Anyone else would have run away at some point, responded to evil with evil, or been deeply scarred. That wasn't the case for me. Today, I work with a guy who really hurt me a lot in high school, and recently he asked me, 'Manuel, why are you my friend after everything I did to you? I have truly forgiven him from the bottom of my heart, and what helped me to do so was Our Lady and her infinite humility, which is that of Jesus, “meek and humble of heart”. In an apparition, she apologised for the time and peace she was taking away from my family: we were up against the judiciary, part of the Church, and we were under constant attack from the newspapers. Our Lady taught us to be like her and her Son, to give the right importance to the things of this world and to offer our suffering by showing us the goal, Paradise, which we were able to experience in part by seeing her. We children were then taught by our parents to let go of evil and to ignore acts of bullying: my parents were the first to always forgive everyone.

Probably their mystical experience also helped them.
All of us in the family have been sustained by this. My brother Davide was three years old when he witnessed the first apparition to Jessica and my father, and he pulled on the cord of Our Lady's robe. My father received a kiss on the forehead from Mary, and my mother has also witnessed many supernatural events. I saw Our Lady when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer: I was seven years old, I was in the garden, and Mary appeared on the roof of the room where my mother was. That day I was crying because I wanted to go and pick fennel with my uncle, and my father took me. On the way back, I smelled the oil from the statue we have in our house, then I saw a rainbow vortex from which angels emerged, and the Virgin Mary with Jesus in her arms: she was beautiful. Time seemed to stand still, it was as if we were not on earth. She did not say anything but smiled at me. That smile was like seeing heaven and knowing where we are going and hearing her say, “Don't worry, everything will be alright”. In fact, I was no longer afraid. I realised that the final destination is truly the answer to what every man desires, so that problems and suffering fade into the background. I remember when, in high school, they deliberately pushed me against a sharp cast-iron radiator. It hurt a lot, but as I got up, I remembered Mary's smile repeating, “I am here”. Then, when I got home covered in bruises, I saw the same smile on my mother's face.

Yet you wrote a book for the rest of the world that did not have these graces. Why?
Today I no longer see Mary, and even though she often comes to me in my dreams, without my personal prayer and the help of the Church and my parents, I would not be able to speak like this. My sister Jessica still sees Our Lady and understands that She is coming because, even though she is almost 40 years old, she still calls her “my little angel”, just like the first time. Yet none of us are saints. Yes, we have the grace of having experienced eternal life, but that is not enough if you do not decide to follow Christ.

What does that mean?
To imitate him. I write that the Sacred Heart is “tired but always welcoming”. Patience is the infinite love of God who waits for us, who forgives us when we truly repent, forgetting everything. Our society sees the humble as failures, but this is not the case: the humble ask, therefore they learn, they walk, they know how to be with others because they do not see them as antagonists, they know how to build. The proud, on the other hand, despise others and therefore wage war: if today the world is full of conflicts, it is precisely because of pride that creates wars in families, at work, among friends, neighbours and therefore between states. Therefore, the wounds of the Heart of Christ, who went to the cross without responding to evil with evil, but entrusting his cause to God, are a school that teaches us to love without measure, to give without reserve.

Today, most adults do not know how to live this way, not even for their own children.
We are no better than anyone else. In my family, we all have strong characters, we always want to be right, but the Sacred Heart has taught us to lay down our weapons. Furthermore, we have shared and offered up the pain we have experienced together, and this has united us greatly.
We also know how to live suffering with joy, thanks to my mother: when she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer on the way back from the Gemelli hospital, she asked my father to stop and buy some pastries and sparkling wine. When she got home, she called us children and my sister's boyfriend (now her husband, ed.) and said: “Mum has cancer, but you can see that God needs this suffering. We mustn't cry, because God has given me a caress of love”. I was about to lose her, but even this took away my fear. But my mother is also like this because she has been devoted to the Sacred Heart since she was a child: if her father, who was very gruff, got angry, she would hide under the statue of the Sacred Heart in the church and find peace there. That's how she understood that if you hide in the Heart of Jesus when you suffer, you find refuge.

You write that Christ's wounds can heal us. How exactly?
First, you have to become aware of your sins, which is why the Church should never stop talking about sin and hell (if you never scold a small child to show them what is right and wrong, they will grow up doing wrong things without knowing it and end up destroying themselves). Then you have to repent and take refuge in the Heart of Jesus. This is done concretely through contemplation of the Eucharist, images or statues of the Sacred Heart. If you go there with an awareness of your need for forgiveness, then He will heal you.

Is it true that the statue of Our Lady that wept tears of blood arrived in place of a statue of the Sacred Heart?
Father Pablo, a family friend, was travelling to many European shrines, and my mother asked him to look for a statue of the Sacred Heart to put in our home. He travelled to Fatima and did not find one, then he went to other Marian sites but found nothing. Finally, in Medjugorje, he thought he would find one, but that was not the case. He then decided to take a statue of Our Lady and said to my mother, ‘Look, I didn't find the Son, but I brought his Mother.’ However, today pilgrims bring us statues and images of the Sacred Heart. I can say that I grew up on my mother's milk and the Sacred Heart.

The other exercise you suggest for healing wounds of the heart is to transform anger into prayer. How do you do that?
Padre Pio had a gruff and angry temperament, but he said that if you suffer, you must offer it up. In other words, he shaped his character: he took the anger he felt at the injustices he suffered and placed it in the Heart of Christ, who transformed it into joy and caresses. It is not a question of repressing anger or blocking it and denying it, which then comes back against you, but of giving it to Christ.

You dedicate the book to your mother, but who are your teachers?
My family is my teacher. It is no coincidence that Our Lady came to a family and for the family, which is so attached today. Then, from an early age, I breathed the universal Church: we have had a spiritual father for 30 years, who, incidentally, did not believe in apparitions.
When he arrived here, instead of a perfect family, he saw my father tired from work, Jessica and Davide arguing, and my mother with her hair standing on end because she was busy managing the children and the press. He became convinced of the truth of the events. Since then, my father has helped us to live our faith and face daily family life with its struggles and joys. It was in this environment that my priestly vocation was born. The first time I heard this call was in 2005. I was very young, and the bishop of the city, Girolamo Grillo, was celebrating Mass here at home. I want to give back the love I received and accepted to those who do not know it.