Apart from the notable differences between them, all religions maintain that the material universe had a beginning and will have an end. So much so that powerful brains like Alfred Newton have made an effort to calculate the date of the final event. In the 1800s, the more realistic assessments of the antiquity of the celestial bodies and the growing confidence in scientific discoveries will push this awareness back. Cosmological theories thus tend to postulate a stable and eternal universe, a conception that will be overcome with the modern theory of the Big Bang. If the beginning is a well-established fact, then the end is easily deducible, e.g. based on the second law of thermodynamics. These are very long-term processes, but it is important to note that even in this case science is converging towards some assumptions of a religious nature. _x000D_
In the Catholic sphere attention is kept alive by the mystics, men and women who claim to converse with the saints, the blessed, the divinity and bear witness to this in their writings. Although never validated by the competent ecclesiastical authority, these messages sound like moral appeals to humanity and often evoke the advent of catastrophic times. Think of Fatima (1917). These are phenomena of a spiritual, social and physical nature. The latter have some similarities with what is predicted by today’s catastrophic ecologism, with respect to which they differ not only in the modalities, but above all in the motivation, which is identified within a spiritual economy rather than contemporary scientific speculation. _x000D_
For the scholar of the territory this assumes great importance, because very often in these cases “Marian sanctuaries” are born, generally on the private initiative of lay groups – “sanctuaries” in all respects, despite the traditional reluctance of religious authorities to get officially involved.

Gianfranco Battisti
University of Trieste

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ID Abstract: 766