- VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -
Padre Pio, the 20th century Italian mystic monk and miracle worker who
for 50 years is said to have had the stigmata -- the bleeding wounds of
Christ -- had for many people always been a saint.
-
- Pope John Paul formally declared his sainthood on Sunday
at a solemn ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands in a sweltering
St. Peter's Square and watched on screen by millions in Italy and around
the world.
-
- For many, this was simply the Church rubber-stamping
a status they had always believed in.
-
- Padre Pio's fame centers on the stigmata, which he had
for 50 years from 1918 until his death in 1968 at the age of 81.
-
- Padre Pio had wounds in the hands, feet and side that
corresponded with the wounds Christ suffered in the crucifixion. He used
brown fingerless gloves to absorb the blood and cover the wounds except
when he said mass.
-
- Doctors were at a loss to explain the wounds, which never
produced gangrene or infection.
-
- When they examined him they were able to feel their fingers
pressing in from either side. When he held up the host at mass, the faithful
were able to see light coming through the wounds.
-
- When he was first investigated by a Vatican inquisitor
in 1927, a report suspected that he inflicted the wounds on himself with
nitric acid. But devotees said it was ridiculous to think he could have
done this for 50 years.
-
- Friars who lived with him like to tell the story of a
man who told Padre Pio of a doctor who believed that the monk had willed
the wounds on himself by always contemplating a crucifix.
-
- Padre Pio told the man: "Tell your doctor friend
to go stare at a cow and see if horns grow on his head."
-
- According to confreres, Pio lost a cup of blood a day
from the stigmata, ate one Spartan meal a day and slept three hours each
night. Yet he was not anemic and did not lose weight.
-
- The stigmata started fading toward the end of his life
and disappeared when he died.
-
- WRESTLING WITH THE DEVIL
-
- Padre Pio is said to have had a stern look in his eyes
that could scare even the devil and, some say, it sometimes did.
-
- Padre Pio had no sympathy for the devil and the devil
certainly had none for him. His biographers say he wrestled with the devil,
literally, and one of the many books written about him is called "The
Devil in the Life of Padre Pio."
-
- According to monks who lived with him, the last big demonic
tussle was in July, 1964, when, at 10 o'clock at night the friars heard
him calling out from his cell.
-
- They found him on the floor, his forehead slit open.
He told a priest later "the devil tried to scratch out my eyes."
-
- The next day, the devil is said to have spoken through
a possessed person, saying "I went to visit somebody. I took revenge."
-
- Many people said Padre Pio was able to predict events
in their lives or knew what they were about to confess.
-
- He was also said to be seen in two places at the same
time -- a mystic ability the Church calls "bi-location"
-
- The Vatican investigated and rehabilitated him twice
and cleared him of charges of sexual misconduct and fraud. In the 1930s
he was ordered not to say mass in public or hear confessions.
-
- The ban was lifted after three years. A new investigation
began in 1960 but he was cleared and rehabilitated in 1965.
-
- PILGRIM BOOM TOWN
-
- The bearded, brown-robed Padre Pio spent nearly all his
life in a simple monastery in the hilltop town of San Giovanni Rotondo
in Italy's rugged southern Puglia region.
-
- When he arrived in 1918, it was a dusty dot of a village
of peasants connected to the outside world by a mule path.
-
- Today, it is the Lourdes of southern Italy, a pilgrim
boom town of some 27,000 residents and 7.5 million visitors a year. Its
economy revolves around souvenir shops, hotels and the huge hospital which
Padre Pio built.
-
- He is credited with performing two miracles after his
death for people who prayed to him.
-
- Before his beatification -- the penultimate step before
sainthood -- he was credited with the medically inexplicable healing of
an Italian woman who had a lung disease.
-
- The second miracle was the curing of an 11-year-old Italian
boy who had meningitis and whose mother prayed to Padre Pio while her son
was in a coma.
-
- Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited
without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable
for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance
thereon.
|