Testimonial letter from Gianni Vanonni

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This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.

This letter is from Gianni Vanonni. It is "Exhibit A-82" in the Noles collection.

The original letter was handwritten in Italian, a text transcription has not yet been created. A text version of its translation has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription.

The image in the text box links to a pdf file with the original letter, the translation, and a notary statement attesting to the validity of the translation. It has 4 pages.

translation

GIANNI VANNONI
via C. Menotti 38
50136 Florence
July 23, 1983

I am a scholar of modern history and work as a researcher at the ’’Centro di Ricerca Interdisciplinare” (Interdisciplinary Research Center), of the University of Florence, which belongs to the "Istituto di Storia delle Istituzioni Religiose e Rapporti tra Chiesa e Stato” (Institute of History of the Religious Institutions and of the Religious Institutions and of the Relations between Church and State) of the faculty of Political Science. I have published many essays in books and magazines. My book entitled "Massoneria, Fascismo e Chiesa Cattolica" (Masonry, Fascism, and the Catholic Church) has been bought by the Library of Congress in Washington.

It is my opinion that Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is a Religious Leader, maybe the greatest of our age, and to my opinion, not only his works, but also his silence are pregnant with teachings.

Gianni Vannoni

[followed by an Oregon notary statement to the effect that a) the declarer is fluent in English and Italian and b) can verify that the translation is accurate]


(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)