wounds. But who knew? As far as I am concerned, Padre Pio’s stigmata were never subjected to rigorous medical examination when he was alive.”
“Why hasn’t this come out?”
“It has come out. There are even persistent rumors in Italy that Pope John XXIII was confronted with evidence by a Vatican investigator who examined Padre Pio’s secret files in the process of declaring him to be a saint. There is evidently a journal entry John XXIII wrote in his diary lamenting the evidence that Padre Pio committed sexual indiscretions with women who were part of his inner circle. There were even accusations that he had sex with women in the confessional, or that he invited them to visit him privately in his cell, where they stayed the night. Other accusations were that he took money in the confessional, enriching himself. Padre Pio finally admitted that this was true, but he claimed he gave the money to poor penitents.”
“Did this come out during his lifetime?”
“Yes. In 1922, the Vatican forbade Padre Pio from hearing theconfessions of women, then the next year the Vatican forbade him from teaching teenage boys. He was famous for claiming the devil came to him every night with every sort of sexual fantasy to tempt him to what he called ‘uncleanness.’ The Holy See eventually became convinced Padre Pio used his fame to sexually pervert boys, that he was a pedophile, just like the priests you had to deal with in the New York archdiocese.”
“Why didn’t this prevent Padre Pio from being declared a saint?”
“Padre Pio was loved, especially in southern Italy. Even today, more Italian Catholics pray to Padre Pio than to any other saint. He is venerated as a celebrity in Italy and he is constantly covered in the Italian equivalents of
People
magazine, even though he has been dead for over forty years.”
“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” Castle said.
“Believers say Padre Pio had the gift of bilocation, the ability to be in two places at once, proof to many that he had supernatural powers God would only have granted him if his faith in Christ was genuine and his stigmata real. Others claimed that he could heal the sick. It goes on and on. Padre Pio’s Masses were very unpredictable. He seemed to go into trances at the altar and he claimed he had visions with Jesus, or with the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, where he could speak with them and they would advise him or tell him intimate secrets.”
“Sounds very much like what Father Bartholomew told me,” Castle said. “That he could see and speak with Jesus, even that Jesus was present with him in my treatment room.”
“Mass with Padre Pio got so bizarre that parishioners just sat in the church, sometimes for hours, and waited for him to come back to reality so he could finish the Mass. Others say he could prophesize the future, that he told a young Karol Wojtyla, visiting from Poland, that he would be elected pope one day, even thoughPadre Pio said he would never live to see that day. It’s part of the lore. A lot like Nostradamus. Those who believe Nostradamus predicted the future claim he met a young monk one day, Felice Paretti, when the young man stopped to take a drink from a fountain in the street. Nostradamus evidently saw him in the street for the first time and immediately predicted he would be pope. Paretti did become Pope Sixtus V, but this supposed meeting-in-the-street prediction came to light only decades later, long after Nostradamus was dead and Paretti’s papacy was an historical fact.”
“So do you think you could explain Father Bartholomew’s stigmata by a similar fraud? Do you think his stigmata are not real?”
“I don’t know,” Gabrielli said honestly. “You’re the doctor. I will leave the medical examination up to you. I’m a chemist. All I could do is examine Father Bartholomew’s claimed stigmata to see if I could figure out a natural way chemicals could have been used to produce the wounds.”
The
“Why hasn’t this come out?”
“It has come out. There are even persistent rumors in Italy that Pope John XXIII was confronted with evidence by a Vatican investigator who examined Padre Pio’s secret files in the process of declaring him to be a saint. There is evidently a journal entry John XXIII wrote in his diary lamenting the evidence that Padre Pio committed sexual indiscretions with women who were part of his inner circle. There were even accusations that he had sex with women in the confessional, or that he invited them to visit him privately in his cell, where they stayed the night. Other accusations were that he took money in the confessional, enriching himself. Padre Pio finally admitted that this was true, but he claimed he gave the money to poor penitents.”
“Did this come out during his lifetime?”
“Yes. In 1922, the Vatican forbade Padre Pio from hearing theconfessions of women, then the next year the Vatican forbade him from teaching teenage boys. He was famous for claiming the devil came to him every night with every sort of sexual fantasy to tempt him to what he called ‘uncleanness.’ The Holy See eventually became convinced Padre Pio used his fame to sexually pervert boys, that he was a pedophile, just like the priests you had to deal with in the New York archdiocese.”
“Why didn’t this prevent Padre Pio from being declared a saint?”
“Padre Pio was loved, especially in southern Italy. Even today, more Italian Catholics pray to Padre Pio than to any other saint. He is venerated as a celebrity in Italy and he is constantly covered in the Italian equivalents of
People
magazine, even though he has been dead for over forty years.”
“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” Castle said.
“Believers say Padre Pio had the gift of bilocation, the ability to be in two places at once, proof to many that he had supernatural powers God would only have granted him if his faith in Christ was genuine and his stigmata real. Others claimed that he could heal the sick. It goes on and on. Padre Pio’s Masses were very unpredictable. He seemed to go into trances at the altar and he claimed he had visions with Jesus, or with the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, where he could speak with them and they would advise him or tell him intimate secrets.”
“Sounds very much like what Father Bartholomew told me,” Castle said. “That he could see and speak with Jesus, even that Jesus was present with him in my treatment room.”
“Mass with Padre Pio got so bizarre that parishioners just sat in the church, sometimes for hours, and waited for him to come back to reality so he could finish the Mass. Others say he could prophesize the future, that he told a young Karol Wojtyla, visiting from Poland, that he would be elected pope one day, even thoughPadre Pio said he would never live to see that day. It’s part of the lore. A lot like Nostradamus. Those who believe Nostradamus predicted the future claim he met a young monk one day, Felice Paretti, when the young man stopped to take a drink from a fountain in the street. Nostradamus evidently saw him in the street for the first time and immediately predicted he would be pope. Paretti did become Pope Sixtus V, but this supposed meeting-in-the-street prediction came to light only decades later, long after Nostradamus was dead and Paretti’s papacy was an historical fact.”
“So do you think you could explain Father Bartholomew’s stigmata by a similar fraud? Do you think his stigmata are not real?”
“I don’t know,” Gabrielli said honestly. “You’re the doctor. I will leave the medical examination up to you. I’m a chemist. All I could do is examine Father Bartholomew’s claimed stigmata to see if I could figure out a natural way chemicals could have been used to produce the wounds.”
The
Similar Books
