Spreading The Urantia Book Throughout Italy

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By Cesare Nicoletti, Viterbo, Italy

My discovery of The Urantia Book was a rebirth for me, the spiritual rebirth that I had been waiting for my whole life. I discovered God and Jesus as a child through involvement in a Catholic religious community. But the religious beliefs, which gave me so much in that period of my life, came to an end. My breaking point came in conjunction with the death of my father. I experienced what the great mystics refer to as the ecstatic “death of the soul” in union with God. This process, which generally leads the believer into an almost dreamlike and ecstatic state, resulted for me in an awakening of my soul and the rediscovery of the true God.

I was evidently ready for The Urantia Book, which I found on the internet seemingly by chance. After a year, I began my first complete reading, using the electronic version on Urantia Foundation’s website. Later, I bought the book in hard copy form and continued to read, deepening my understanding of its teachings.

When I had read the book for several years, I started to take courses from the Urantia Book Internet School, some in English and some in French and Spanish, eventually completing about 18 in all. Then I decided to make it my mission to make the book known in Italy.

To begin, I started doing whatever I could online. I started several Facebook groups in the Italian language, hoping to attract as many people as possible. Once that was done, I contacted the most important Italian online libraries, offering the free version downloadable from the Foundation’s site.

Then, to take book dissemination beyond the internet and place physical books in libraries, I contacted Tamara Strumfeld at Urantia Foundation, who provided me with fifteen books. My next step was to contact libraries to make sure they would accept the book. I selected cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, which were also relatively close to my home in order to have personal contact with the library.

After contacting many libraries and not receiving answers from all of them, I expanded my list to the whole Italian territory, giving priority to large cities and prestigious libraries. The result was very widespread. So far I have five placements in libraries near my home and ten in libraries located throughout the rest of Italy (Lucca, Palermo, Mentana, Foligno, Crotone, Narni, Genoa, Marsciano, Cagliari, and Biella).

One impressive result was my correspondence with the Franciscan Library of Palermo. In their reply to me, they wrote, “We read with great pleasure and gratitude what you wrote. We wish to confirm our interest in the volume referred to.” I never expected a Franciscan library to react in this beautiful way.

Currently I am trying to bring more people into the Urantia community through Facebook. It is my hope that those who visit my page will be positively influenced by the articles and will decide to read The Urantia Book. In twelve years, I will retire and will be able to devote myself more diligently to the diffusion of the book and its teachings and to the organization of study groups. I pray that this work will bear fruit, and I will be honored to help all of my Italian brothers and sisters on this wonderful journey.

The future is uncertain for everyone, and in the present moment everything may seem very difficult. Yet the future is built with small gestures, with pure thoughts, with actions judged by our souls, and by transcending our fear of making mistakes. What matters is the intention, even more than the immediate results. Today is the point from which all future possibilities radiate, and everyone is given the opportunity to choose among them.

A future will come in which our world’s confusion will recede little by little, and the era of light and life will approach closer and closer. This is our planetary future, and all readers are working for the dawn of the new day. For us, the important thing is to begin building it now, even if we will not be here to see it ourselves.