The Miracle Man

AT SAN GIOVANNI Rotondo an event of great importance is taking place on April 24: the exposition of the body of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina to the veneration of the faithful. The exposition was preceded by the exhumation of his body, which took place on the night between 2 and 3 March.

As this article is gong to print the scientific examination of the beloved mystic friar is still in progress. Whatever the outcome, devotees of Padre Pio around the world are thrilled, and many have already booked flights, buses and hotels to pay homage to the stigmatised friar.

As with many saints, Padre Pio is a ‘sign of contradiction’. He is loved and venerated by some to the same degree as he is hated and reviled by others. Whenever his figure is evoked, some are ignited with enthusiasm, while others feel driven to voice or publish vitriolic attacks on his persona. Neutrality, it seems, is impossible with Padre Pio – one is either for him or against him.

When Padre Pio was still alive, many of his followers had noticed that controversy, persecution and criticism had plagued his life from the moment he had received the stigmata, and when this fact was brought home to him, he replied with a rather prophetic remark, “You may rest assured that I’ll make more noise after I’m dead than when I’m alive!”

Now, 40 years on, a voluminous body of literature has accumulated describing in detail all the miracles attributed to him, as well as the scathing criticisms and attacks that have been heaped upon him, and the controversy surrounding his figure is still very much alive.

September of this year marks the fortieth anniversary of his death and the ninetieth anniversary of the impression of the stigmata on his body. Many events are scheduled to remember these events, beginning with the exhumation of his body which took place last March. A huge crowd participated in this first event, and this episode alone proves that the many attempts made so far to demolish Padre Pio’s reputation have largely failed.

A libellous publication

One of these latest attempts came to light a few months ago when newspapers across Italy reported the publication of a book containing hitherto undisclosed material, the effect of which was to casts discredit on the humble Capuchin friar. This is the book The Other Christ: Padre Pio and 20th Century Italy by historian Sergio Luzzatto. The book insinuates, among other things, that the Franciscan friar produced the stigmata by applying acid onto his body.

At this point it is important to remind readers that the stigmata, and the saintliness of Padre Pio, have been acknowledged by the Holy See. Those of our readers who are acquainted with my previous articles, particularly those on Lourdes, will be aware that before the Church declares that a person is a saint, or that some phenomenon is truly miraculous, a great deal of documentary evidence must first be collected and subjected to scrupulous scientific testing. The Church always weighs these matters carefully, and with the utmost gravity and seriousness. So to cast discredit on the figure of Padre Pio automatically implies casting discredit on the Church as well.

In his book, Luzzatto publishes the sworn testimony of a pharmacist who claims that the young Padre Pio bought four grams of carbolic acid in 1919.

“I was an admirer of Padre Pio, and I met him for the first time on 31 July 1919,” wrote the pharmacist in question, one Maria De Vito.

De Vito claimed to have spent a month with the priest in the southern town of San Giovanni Rotondo, seeing him often.

“Padre Pio called me to him in complete secrecy and, telling me not to inform his fellow brothers, he gave me personally an empty bottle, and asked if I would act as a chauffeur to transport it back from Foggia to San Giovanni Rotondo with four grams of pure carbolic acid. He explained that the acid was for disinfecting syringes. He also asked for other things, such as Valda tablets.”

This testimony was originally presented to the Vatican by the Archbishop of Manfredonia, Pasquale Gagliardi, as circumstantial evidence that Padre Pio caused his own stigmata with acid.

Pope John XXIII

Luzzatto’s book also contends that Pope John XXIII was a staunch opponent of the Saint of Pietrelcina, and that the pontiff clearly regarded him as a fake. Luzzatto reports that in 1960 a bulky volume containing a series of documents defaming Padre Pio landed on the pontiff’s desk. These were supported by taped recordings from microphones installed inside Padre Pio’s confessional. The particularly lurid nature of these accusations was shocking. What is worse, this evidence did not originate from anonymous sources, but from none other than the Superior General of the Order of the Capuchins, who was pressuring the Holy See to intervene.

Quite understandably Pope John XXIII, after a perusal of the contents, was shocked and worried. If the information contained in those documents was true, then the image of the Church would have suffered greatly.

While still under shock the Pope confided his disappointment and bitterness to his private diary on June 25, 1960, “I am sorry for PP [Padre Pio], who has a soul to be saved, and I pray for him intensely. What happened – that is, the discovery because of the films – si vera sunt quae referentur [if it is true what they say] – of his intimate and incorrect relations with the women who constitute his Pretorian guard, which even now stands firm around him, leads one to think of a vast disaster of souls which has been diabolically set up to discredit the Holy Church in the world, and especially in Italy”.

Pope John XXIII added, “In the calmness of my spirit I humbly persist in believing that the Lord faciat cum tentatione provandum [is doing this as a test of faith], and that from this immense deception will come a teaching of clarity and health for a great many”.

Luzzatto’s book does not carry much ‘evidence’ besides these two unrelated episodes. Let us now examine the circumstances a little closer, beginning with the ‘acid’ episode.

The acid test

First of all it is important to underscore that the ‘carbonic acid’ allegation had already been examined by the Holy See during the beatification process of Padre Pio, and that, after a thorough analysis, it was eventually dismissed. That the assertion remains unsubstantiated is proved by the fact that Luzzatto himself is not able to offer any proof that the Capuchin friar actually used the acid to cause his own stigmata.

Contrariwise, what can indeed be substantiated is the fact that the stigmata on Padre Pio’s body are scientifically inexplicable. It must be remembered that the Holy Office commissioned a number of highly qualified doctors to carry out a series of the scientific tests on the friar’s stigmata. One of these, Dr. Giorgio Festa, was able to study them on a number of occasions with intervals of several years in-between. Besides his medical reports for the Holy office, Dr. Festa also wrote a book Misteri di scienza e luci di fede, which came out in the 30s.

These reports show that the stigmata could not have been caused by either burns or sharp objects. They also show that they never healed. Now, because they never closed, and because they could not even be healed by the most modern medical techniques of those days, they were logically bound to develop into gangrene eventually, but this never took place in the 50 years that Padre Pio had to bear them!

Then, when Padre Pio died, the stigmata suddenly disappeared. This was testified by his fellow friars and by the doctors who examined his body. The friars were careful not to touch those parts of his body that had borne the stigmata. So, for example, they left on his hands the fingerless gloves which he had used in life to hide the marks. However, numerous detailed photos of his body were taken. For half a century the stigmata had bled regularly, but on his lifeless body no marks were visible, not even the trace of a scar. The skin was as fresh and supple as that of a child, and the photos show this quite clearly.

Now, the doctors who examined him when he was alive, and his fellow friars who had helped him put bandages around the stigmata, all claim that the wounds ran so deep that light was able to penetrate all the way the other side of his body. So the wounds were deep and serious, yet they simply vanished into thin air when he died. The perfect reconstruction of the organic tissues at the moment of his death, so that not even a trace of the stigmata remained, can only be regarded as a miracle, as no scientific explanation has so far been found to explain it. Now Luzzattto was well aware of all this, yet his book makes no mention of it whatsoever.

Si vera sunt

As for Pope John’s note, it seems that Luzzatto has not studied it carefully enough. Pope John had, in fact, interjected the comment, ‘si vera sunt’, which means, ‘if these [reports] be true’. In other words the Pope was well aware that these were only allegations, and Luzzatto simply ‘forgets’ to mention that these reports were later proved to be without foundation, concocted by one of the many groups critical of the saint of Pietrelcina.

Moreover, Luzzatto also fails to mention that Pope John XXIII subsequently realised that he had misjudged Padre Pio, but the Pope never rectified these comments because they were private considerations confided to his personal diary, and thus did not need a disclaimer.

Luzzatto’s wilful omission of these weighty considerations, as well as of the conclusions reached by the committee for the cause of beatification and canonisation, which had undertaken a thorough scrutiny of the documentary evidence against the Capuchin friar reveals his poorly researched work for what it truly is: anti-Catholic libel.

In these last few months, however, the clamour raised by Luzzatto’s publication is beginning to die down, and the smear campaign against Padre Pio seems to be backfiring.

Ecclesiastical authorities, with the help of the faithful, are organising a series of events. The first will be the exhumation of his body, and its exposition for the veneration of the faithful. Generally, the exhumation of a saint’s body takes place after the beatification process has been completed, but before the canonisation proper. This procedure was once mandatory, but it is no longer so, and it was not observed in Padre Pio’s case.

Traditionally, an exhumation is always carried out whenever a saint is translated to a new shrine. This is probably the motive behind this exhumation, as Padre Pio should be translated to the new, magnificent church recently erected in his honour.

International conference

The news of the exhumation had been officially announced by Monsignor Domenico Umberto D’Ambrosio, archbishop of Manfredonia-Vieste-San Giovanni Rotondo, the Holy See’s delegate to the Shrine in San Giovanni Rotondo on January 6 this year.

Devotees of Padre Pio around the world couldn’t believe their ears. However, Padre Pio’s opponents are also busily at work. They are afraid that the scientific examination will yield some nasty surprises, so they are already putting out voices and articles claiming that the friars applied particular substances to his body at the time of the burial in 1968 to preserve it, and thus be able, at a later time (that is, now) to falsely claim that a miracle has taken place. But this allegation has, like the others, also been officially disproved.

In his announcement Monsignor D’Ambrogio also recalled that September of this year coincides with the 50th anniversary of the impression of the stigmata of Padre Pio’s body. It was therefore decided, in conjunction with these events, to prepare a conference on the stigmata of the saint of Pietrelcina. The meeting will be attended by acclaimed scientists and researchers in the fields of medicine, theology and the humanistic sciences.

A detailed account of the findings of the scientific examination, as well as a report on the stigmata conference taking place in September, will be given in a sequel to this article, which should be published around the end of this year.

In the meantime devotees of the saint of Pietrelcina are awaiting confirmation of a promise made by Pope Benedict XVI to Archbishop D’Ambrosio and to a delegation of Capuchin friars on October 14, 2006, in which the Pontiff declared he would visit the shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo to pay homage to the saint’s remains.

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PADRE PIO’S BODY WELL PRESERVED

Church officials exhumed the body of Padre Pio on the night between 2 and 3 March in preparation for the public veneration of his remains on April 24.

Archbishop Domenico D’Ambrosio reported that the body of Padre Pio, who died in 1968, was partially incorrupt. Although there was no sign of the stigmata, the saint’s hair and beard were intact.

The Archbishop remarked that the hands of the beloved Capuchin friar were so well preserved that he appeared to have “just had a manicure”. The Archbishop also said that besides the upper skull, which shows some signs of the process of mummification, the rest of his remains are in surprisingly good condition, including his joints – which are all attached, and his feet.

D’Ambrosio confirmed that neither his feet nor hands showed any trace of the stigmata, since “as we know, they disappeared at the moment of his death”.