A controversial Capuchin

Padre Pio’s path to acceptance in the Church was far from a smooth one, writes Greg Daly

When Padre Pio was canonised by Pope St John Paul II in June 2002 before a crowd of 300,000 people it seemed in some ways almost a formality. The path to Padre Pio’s beatification just three years earlier had, however, been far from straightforward, with the saint having once been a highly controversial figure.

It was not long after Padre Pio of Pietrelcina received the stigmata in 1918 that rumours began to spread of cures and other miracles linked with him. People talked of souls being read, of bilocation, of the blind being able to see and the lame being able to walk, of cancerous tumours disappearing, of the gangrenous foot of a soldier, deemed by doctors beyond treatment, being healed.

Unsurprisingly, the 31-year-old Capuchin became a celebrity, with huge crowds gathering in San Giovanni to hear him say Mass, to have him hear their Confession, to be blessed by him or even just to see him.

Scepticism

Equally unsurprisingly, Church authorities viewed the whole affair with some scepticism, with the local bishop, Archbishop Pasquale Gagliardi of Manfredonia, suspecting fraud and wondering if Padre Pio’s Capuchin community was seeking to profit from the affair.

Indeed, there seemed to be some evidence that the stigmata were indeed fraudulent. One Maria De Vito, the cousin of a local pharmacist, had claimed that when he first met Padre Pio in 1919 the friar had bought four grams of carbolic acid from him, claiming it was for disinfecting syringes for injections – Italy was at the time in the throes of the Spanish Flu epidemic that killed over 50 million people around the world between 1918 and 1920, and anti-flu injections were given at San Giovanni’s Capuchin friary. De Vito speculated, however, that such acid could have been used by Padre Pio “to cause or further irritate wounds on his hands”.

Suspicion was not confined to the locality – when Pius XI became Pope in 1922, the similiarly sceptical Vatican had Dr Paschal Robinson visit San Giovanni to examine the situation.

Almost certainly the first Irish person to meet Padre Pio, Dr Robinson had been born in Dublin in 1870, raised in the United States, and worked as a journalist before becoming a Franciscan in 1896, being ordained five years later. An eminent medievalist and specialist on St Francis and early Franciscan history, he became professor of medieval history at the Catholic University of America in 1913, being inducted into the Royal Historical Society the following year.

In 1919 he was taken into the Holy See’s diplomatic service, in which role he would serve at the Paris Peace Conference and in the Middle East, becoming in 1930 Ireland’s first papal nuncio since Archbishop Giovanni Battista Rinuccini in the 17th Century.

An accomplished journalist, academic, and diplomat, Dr Robinson seemed an ideal choice for the task of investigating what was going on at San Giovanni Rotondo.

He swiftly concluded that Padre Pio’s wounds were genuine, with the bleeding from them being quite real – some had claimed that the whole phenomenon was nothing but a hoax. Further, he noted that the Capuchin covered the wounds and seemed embarrassed by them, with the publicity surrounding them not being sought by him.

However, while he believed the wounds were genuine, he would not comment on what had caused them, something about which doctors had differed.

One, Dr Amico Bignami, Professor of Pathology at the Royal University of Rome, an atheist who in 1919 had been asked by the Capuchins to examine the wounds, had speculated that they had begun as a pathological condition, aided by auto-suggestion, and had been sustained through the use of chemicals – Padre Pio had told him that he disinfected the wounds with iodine a couple of times a week or more.

Believing that the wounds would heal if Padre Pio was denied any opportunity to clean or irritate them with chemicals, Dr Bignami had all the iodine removed from the friar’s cell – the friary’s Guardian, Padre Paolino, was more concerned about carbolic acid – and ordered his wounds bandaged and sealed by witnesses, with these being changed and resealed each day, the treatment’s progress was recorded.

Over the eight days Dr Bignami prescribed for the treatment, the wounds bled more than before, with the friars tasked with changing the bandages noting both the continued bleeding and the fact of the bandages never being tampered with. Two years later, Bishop Raffaello Carlo Rossi penned a 200-page report into the matter, observing that the stigmata “were not caused or preserved with physical and chemical means, which, after all, would have been in absolute contrast with Padre Pio’s proven virtue”.

Professor Luigi Romanelli, the head of Barletta’s civil hospital, the first person asked by the Capuchins to investigate Padre Pio’s wounds, had believed that any speculation about their origin would be beyond medical competence, but following Dr Bignami’s investigation and attempted cure, he returned to the Capuchin community with Dr Giorgio Festa in October 1919. Following his own investigation, Dr Festa wrote a detailed report confidently ruling that the wounds were not due to an external trauma or the application of any chemical irritants.

Cause

Whatever the cause of the stigmata might have been, however, Dr Robinson thought the matter best played down, and recommended that Padre Pio not appear in public as long as the stigmata were present. In 1923 the Holy Office – the forerunner of today’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – said that there were not grounds to deem Padre Pio’s wounds supernatural in origin, and urged Catholics not to visit San Giovanni.

The stigmata, of course, did not go away, and so over the decades various restrictions were placed on the friar – he was not merely barred from publicly displaying his wounds, but was at times forbidden to say public Masses, to hear lay confessions, to meet with devotees, or even to answer letters. Popular support for Padre Pio never abated, however, and when plans to assign him to a community in Ancona in northern Italy became public, the prospect of riots led the authorities to decide to leave him where he was.

In 1933, Pius XI lifted restrictions on Padre Pio’s public ministry, with Pius XII encouraging the faithful to visit the friar, but while the Capuchin mystic’s popularity and fame continued to grow, the cloud of suspicion lingered in the Vatican. Over the decades, investigations continued, with bishops and priests of all shades being sent from Rome or by the Capuchins themselves to the small  town in the Gargano Mountains to ponder what to do about Padre Pio.

The pontificate of Pope St John XXIII saw the Holy Office directing further inquiries into Padre Pio, against the background of a detailed report into alleged wrongdoing by the friar being put before the Pope.

A note written by Pope in June 1960, following receipt of the report, said: “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.”

At the same time, he 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.”

According to Msgr Pietro Parente, a Holy Office investigator who had taken notes and made secret films in San Giovanni Rotondo, it seemed the devotion of three female followers of Padre Pio was “not merely spiritual”.

In response to the report, Msgr Carlo Macari was sent to San Giovanni Rotondo in July 1960. On arrival, he cancelled all celebrations for Padre Pio’s 50th priestly jubilee, which was due to fall on August 10.

The friar was swiftly barred from celebrating weddings and baptisms, restricted to a strict 30-minute slot for Mass – a far shorter period than his usual celebration allowed for, banned from hearing the confessions of certain individuals, limited to three minutes with each penitent, and forbidden from speaking to women alone.

Denying him human support at this time, friars who were his friends – including ones who tended him in his illness – were sent away, and his own superior even went beyond Msgr Maccari’s strictures, posting signs directing people not to approach Padre Pio and forbidding other friars from showing him such kindnesses as help going upstairs.

The treatment seemed remarkable, especially given how the friar’s jubilee had provoked congratulations from numerous bishops across Italy and even from Chicago, with the Italian prelates writing to congratulate Padre Pio including Bologna’s Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro and Milan’s Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Blessed Pope Paul VI.

According to Stefano Campanella’s study of Pope St John XXIII and Padre Pio, Obedientia et Pax, when confronted with lurid accusations about Padre Pio, the Pope consulted the Archbishop of Manfredonia, Dr Andrea Ceserano, who convinced him that the accusations were not true; he ordered the Holy Office not to increase sanctions.

Things were, however, far from good, with Padre Pio increasingly looking like a pariah, but things changed rapidly with the accession to the papacy in 1963 of Blessed Paul VI, who had in 1959 asked Padre Pio for his prayers.

In 1964, the Pope directed the Holy Office that Padre Pio should not be confined “like a criminal” but should instead be permitted to practise his priestly ministry “in complete freedom”. For the last few years of his life Padre Pio’s ministry flourished, while devotion to him continued to grow.

The priest’s popularity didn’t stop with his death in 1968, with his heavenly intercession being sought and numerous miracles being attributed to him. His cult continued to develop and thrive during Blessed Paul’s papacy – hardly surprising given his conviction that his “real mission” would begin after his death.

“Look what fame he had, what a worldwide following gathered around him,” said Blessed Paul in 1971. “But why? Because he was a philosopher? Because he was wise? Because he had resources at his disposal? No – because he said Mass humbly, heard confessions from dawn to dusk and was – it is not easy to say it – one who bore the wounds of our Lord. He was a man of prayer and suffering.”

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Padre Pio’s popularity kept growing during the reign of St John Paul II, with the Polish Pope beatifying and canonising the once-controversial Capuchin, alluding at both ceremonies to how he had himself met Padre Pio in 1947.

“When I was a student here in Rome I myself had the chance to meet him personally, and I thank God for allowing me today to enter Padre Pio’s name in the book of the Blessed,” he said at the May 1999 beatification ceremony in which he described Padre Pio as a “humble Capuchin friar” who “astonished the world”.

Noting how those who went to San Giovanni Rotondo to attend Padre Pio’s Mass, to seek his counsel or to confess to him had seen in him “a living image of Christ suffering and risen”, the Pope said that Blessed Pio of Pietrelcina had shared in the Passion with a special intensity, as shown by the wounds he bore.

“No less painful, and perhaps even more distressing from a human point of view, were the trials which he had to endure as a result, it might be said, of his incomparable charisms,” said the Pontiff. “It happens at times in the history of holiness that, by God’s special permission, the one chosen is misunderstood. In that case, obedience becomes for him a crucible of purification, a path of gradual assimilation to Christ, a strengthening of true holiness.”

Three years later, on a blisteringly hot June day in 2002, the Polish Pope canonised Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, holding up the Capuchin mystic as a model for the faithful, most especially priests – and as the kind of figure who in our day Pope Francis consistently urges priests to resemble.

“Padre Pio was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making himself available to all by welcoming them, by spiritual direction and, especially, by the administration of the sacrament of Penance,” he said, continuing, “I also had the privilege, during my young years, of benefitting from his availability for penitents.”

The experience of having one’s Confession heard by the new saint was clearly momentous.

“The ministry of the confessional, which is one of the distinctive traits of his apostolate, attracted great crowds of the faithful to the monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo,” said the Pontiff. “Even when that unusual confessor treated pilgrims with apparent severity, the latter, becoming conscious of the gravity of sins and sincerely repentant, almost always came back for the peaceful embrace of sacramental forgiveness.”

St John Paul’s encouragement of priests to carry out with joy and zeal their ministry, after the example of Padre Pio, made it all the more apt, then, that in June 2009 Pope Benedict XVI made his own pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo, two days after launching the Year of Priests.

The humble Capuchin from Pietrelcino had been recognised as the Curé d’Ars of the 20th Century, and a model for priests in the 21st.