TO THE READER
1.The text adopted in this edition is the Typewritten version (ds) or Second draft, edited by Fr Alberione himself with the help of his stenographer secretaries [Fr] Antonio Speciale and [Br] Silvano De Blasio. It has, however, been corrected here and there or completed by way of reference to the original Manuscript copy (ms). Such changes are always noted in the footnotes.
2.The explanatory footnotes are all editorial additions. For the most part they are from the 1971 (G. Barbero) and 1985 (Pasotti-Giovannini) editions, and have been integrated by the editors into the present edition.
3.The marginal numbering, in bold, first introduced by G. Barbero, and then followed in subsequent editions, is the one used here. It indicates the paragraphs or the main ideas of the text in a continuous order. The references in the Contents and in the Indices, except where there is an explicit reference to a page number, refer to the marginal numbering.
4.The titles in the ds text, either handwritten or typewritten in lower case and underlined, are all subti-tles. In this printed text such subtitles are in bold italic. Titles that have been added are in bold face Roman. The titles in capitals, added also by the editors, aim to facilitate the understanding of the structure implicit in the text, thus highlighting its main sections.
5.As always with the texts of Fr Alberione (here to a greater degree, because of the fragmentary nature of the notes utilized), the dictation often appears defective: spelling mistakes, punctuation and syntax leave a lot to be desired. We have tried to make the use of capitals and punctuation as uniform as possible except where the Author is specific. Here and there with elliptic expressions, we have attempted to complete the sentence with words added between square brackets [...] or by offering a possible reconstruction in the footnotes, in accordance with the most likely presumed sense.
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