Padre Pio -- The Stigmatist

[Yuki Sohma]

"Padre Pio settled down to a life of prayer and obscurity and spent about a year in this peaceful pursuit. The Capuchin Fathers celebrated the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis on the 17th of September in that year of 1918 as they had for centuries. It happened to fall on a Wednesday; the following Friday, the 20th, Padre Pio was in the choir alone making his thanksgiving after Mass. When a piercing cry rent the silence of the chapel, one of the monks, Padre Leone, ran to the choir. He found Padre Pio lying on the floor unconscious, bleeding profusely from five deep wounds in his hands, in his feet and in his side."
From--Padre Pio, The Stigmatist, written by Rev. Charles Mortimer Carty, Copyright 1963, Radio Replies Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A.

 

[kallipolis]

I have studied the life of this friar for very many years. If we can separate the saccharin sweetness that many human beings heap on the memory of this man, we can recognise something of the yet untapped powers of the human person.

This simple man's powers of discernment and paranormal manifestations of insight beyond human reasoning, does reveal to us that the human person is more than flesh and blood.

Of the many supernatural manifestations attributed to this Capuchin friar, for me the most amusing involved the visit to Friar Pio of a French aristocrat.

On completing his visit to Padre Pio the French prince commented to the senior friar how well Padre Pio spoke the French language without an Italian accent. The senior friar replied that Padre Pio had come from a humble background and had never learnt the French language. Padre Pio only communicated in his own Italian language. The French prince laughed and appreciated the humour of his host. Later the senior friar realised that his aristocratic guest had been serious, when complimenting Padre Pio on his fluency in the French language.

There are literally hundreds of stories attributing supernatural powers to Padre Pio. Much can be learnt through the Internet.

Thank you Yuki Sohma, for your interesting posting.

 

[BeauMinet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pio_of_Pietrelcina#Controversies

"His accusers included high-ranking archbishops, bishops, theologians and physicians.[13]"

"The founder of Rome's Catholic university hospital concluded Padre Pio was "an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited people's credulity."[14] In short, he was accused of infractions against all three of his monastic vows: poverty, chastity and obedience.[13]"

"In 1923, he was forbidden to teach teenage boys in the school attached to the monastery because he was considered "a noxious Socrates, capable of perverting the fragile lives and souls of boys."[15]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortification_of_the_flesh

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, a saint who received the stigmata wrote in one of his letters: "Let us now consider what we must do to ensure that the Holy Spirit may dwell in our souls. It can all be summed up in mortification of the flesh with its vices and concupiscences, and in guarding against a selfish spirit... The mortification must be constant and steady, not intermittent, and it must last for one's whole life. Moreover, the perfect Christian must not be satisfied with a kind of mortification which merely appears to be severe. He must make sure that it hurts." Like St. Josemaria, Padre Pio and Mother Teresa of Calcutta used the cilice and discipline regularly as means of doing penance.

 

[kallipolis]

There have been many attempts to discredit Padre Pio. Even The Vatican investigated him. Padre Pio was admonished by The Vatican, as a result of allegations laid against him. All of the allegations were investigated and proven without merit.

When we read the complete picture we can well understand that Padre Pio's greatest critics were to be found within his own Catholic Church. The same church later apologised for not recognising the innocence of this man, a lot earlier. A few years ago the late Padre Pio was canonised as Saint Pio. How times change, when the truth finally is revealed.

 

[kallipolis]

This is another interesting reflection on the life and times of Padre Pio:

I quote from an Italian fan club of Padre Pio. The translation from the Italian, is rather poor.

In Bari (Italy) during the Second World War there was the headquarters of the American Air Forces General Command. Many Officers were said to have been saved by Padre Pio during the war. Even the General Commander had been a witness to one amazing episode. The American Commanding Officer wanted to lead a squadron of bombardiers to destroy a depot of German war material that had been located in St. Giovanni Rotondo. The General said, “When the airplanes were near the target, his men and himself, saw in the sky, a monk with the uplifted hands. The bombs had dropped away by themselves and fell into the woods. The airplanes had reversed course without being maneuvered by the pilots or by the other Officers. All wondered who that padrepio10.jpg (11081 byte)monk was which the airplanes had obeyed. Someone told the General, “At San Giovanni Rotondo was a monk who worked miracles”, and he decided that, as soon as the country had been freed, he would have go to seek if he was the same monk they had seen in the sky. After the war, the General went to the Capuchin monastery with some pilots. Just entering the sacristy, the General found himself in front of various monks, among whom he immediately recognized the monk that had stopped his airplanes: he was Padre Pio. Padre Pio walked toward him and as he approached him, he said: “Are you the one who wanted to kill all of us?” Relieved by the look and by the words of the Padre, the General knelt in front of him. As usual Padre Pio spoken to him in dialect, but the General was convinced that the monk had spoken in English. This was another father Pio’s gifts. The two became friends.

 

[ronboy]

My grandmother is very devoted to St. Pio, and I have known of him and his works my entire life.

I've read the books, heard and read the stories, and experienced his influence first hand.

My cousin was sixteen around the time that Padre Pio died in 1968. She was claiming to have dreams of a gray bearded monk coming to her and telling her things. My aunt and uncle didn't know what to make of it. There were other concerns in their family (including another cousin having an illegitimate child) going on at the same time. My grandmother had just received a large photo of Padre Pio from San Giovanni Rotundo (after making a donation), and had it sitting on her counter with a large vigil candle. My cousin freaked when she saw it, because she said that Padre Pio was the monk she saw in her dreams. Some family members believed my cousin, others thought she was making it up.

In 1969, my grandparents made a trip to Sicily to visit my grandfather's oldest sister, who was in frail health. They took my cousin with them, with the intent purpose of making the pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotundo. My Sicilian cousin who was 18, and his 16 year old pregnant wife, drove my grandparents and other cousin from Catania to San Giovanni Rotundo on the mainland (it required a ferry trip from Sicily to the mainland).

Upon their arrival in San Giovanni Rotundo, the went to the chapel where Padre Pio was entombed. As they paid their respects one of the Capuchin friars (Pio's religious order), walked up to my cousin and told her "We've been awaiting your arrival." He proceded to the tomb, and made a small bouquet of fresh flowers from the many theat were put there daily, and told my cousin that he was under instructions to give tham to her. He also said a blessing over my grandparents and my other cousins, and made them promise to bring the baby back to San Giovanni Rotundo once it had been born.

When my grandparents returned to Sicily in 1973, my cousin who had the visions of Padre Pio wasn't with them. And my Sicilian cousin and his wife left their young son at home with his grandmother, when they attempted a second pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotundo. They never made it there. The car broke down on the way to Bari, and they had to return to Sicily.

For years, there had been family debate about what my cousin claims she saw. She was not a particularly religious person, didn't go to mass, and wasn't even married in the Roman Catholic Church. Years later, when I was in college, and taking a course on saints (it was a Catholic college), I tried to talk with her about it. All she would tell me was that she couldn't talk about what she saw. But I heard the conviction in her voice, and saw the belief in her eyes. Because she is not a person drawn to irrational behavior in any facet of her life, that was enough for me to believe that she believed in what she saw in her dreams.

I have always taken a neutral stance about it. I wasn't in San Giovanni Rotundo to witness it myself, but why would my grandparents tell a tale that didn't happen? My grandfather was also a straight-shooting truth teller. My belief in the story isn't important. And as it has been pointed out there are countless stories of Padre Pio's intercession. So why not.....

 

[BluesDog]

it shocks me a little to think that a man of such simple devotion and powerful faith lived in the midst of a world so out of step with his beliefs. That in itself seems to be a miracle.

 

[Spensed]

It's not clear to me why Padre Pio - The Stigmatist is of any relevance to anything whether he's a saint, victim or fraud.

He strikes me as significant as, and an a forerunner to, all that seeing-the-Virgin-Mary-on-a-piece-of-toast-and-selling-it-on-eBay-phenomena.

If he was a true saint, it's a bizarre and limited way of manifesting sainthood. Why would some deity bother sending signals in this crude and primitive way? And why in these types of cases only and never in medically verifiable circumstances?

If he was a victim of some illness, he deserves some sympathy but what else? It's a medical rather than a spiritual mystery.

If he was a self-mutilating nutcase (consciously or not so consciously), well that's all there was to it.

Whichever it is, it seems to me that people project what they want onto him and then use that projection to convince themselves of their own subjective beliefs. So nothing new there then.

Virgin Mary Toast is less messy.

 

[TheObserver]

I really liked this thread. Individuals sharing stories/spirituality in a peaceful manner outside of just being gay.