Martin Moebach was born in Frankfurt in 1951. His mother was Roman Catholic, his father Protestant. Trained in law, over time he has become one of Germany’s leading contemporary authors. Nevertheless, only this year, thanks to the Cantagalli publishing house of Siena, will his first work be translated and published in Italian, The Heresy of the Absence of Form – Roman Liturgy and its Enemy. An essay written in defence of the Roman Catholic liturgy. In recent months he has often been interviewed by the major German newspapers in support of the work of the Holy Father Benedict XVI.

Mister Mosebach, in your book The Lovely Custom of Living. Travelling in Italy, written in 1997, there is a chapter devoted to the Shrine of the Holy House. Why should a place such as this play a role for an important author such as you?
In Loreto one experiences in an especially intense way the actuality of the Christian message. The account of the angel’s visit to Mary could contain mythic features, and these features are also probably present in the idea that we form of the event. Nevertheless this is countered by the stones of the Holy House, which have been shown to have come from Palestine. In some way those stones are, for us, the echo of the words of the Angel and of Mary.

It is well known that you are an admirer of Lorenzo Lotto, who in his last years lived as an oblate in Loreto and left numerous works here. What is the cause of your esteem for the Venetian painter?
Lorenzo Lotto is, absolutely, the most mysterious of the great Venetian painters. As a portrait painter he showed he had insuperable knowledge of the psychology of the human soul; nevertheless at the moment when he was called to paint altar pieces he did not hesitate to put to one side that aspect of his talent. We have here a genuinely religious painter, and this makes him greater than Titian and Veronese, his great contemporaries. He took his faith seriously, making it a total way of life. Acting in this way, one could say that he lived more or less in the manner of an icon painter, that is the characteristic model of the Oriental Christian tradition.

Is there a work by Lorenzo Lotto that is particularly dear to you?
The painting by Lorenzo Lotto that I am most fond of is “The Alms of Saint Anthony” that can be seen in the Church of Saints John and Paul, in Venice. In the upper part, enshrouded in a kind of ‘spiritual sphere’ and surrounded by angels, there is a saint of the Dominican order, below whom two deacons distribute gifts and scrolls of scriptures among implorers. In my view it is a marvellous description of the essence of the Church that, to remain completely faithful to its mission, is summoned to unite earth with Heaven.