St Padre Pio was an Italian Franciscan who said he got the visible stigmata after having pains in his hands and feet and side on and off since 1915. Jesus was supposedly nailed hands and feet to a cross and got stabbed in the side. He was canonised as a saint. The huge popularity he won was down to his letting outrageous miracle stories surround him.

 

Pio claimed that he was attacked often at night by demons in his cell and they fought. Demons would harm him more discreetly than that. A man who declares that unverifiable miracles happen is not to be trusted. There was nobody there to verify the attacks and who saw them happening.

 

So Pio was reportedly beaten by demons at night time. When demons gave him bruises why couldn’t they give him the stigmata? Why did they make so much noise that others near Pio’s cell heard them? Why were they so keen to make him look like a target of evil spirits? They would only do that if he was one of their followers. It was all just a performance if demons were involved at all. Or perhaps Pio was the performer!

 

Demons would not come up from Hell to kick the door and shake Pio’s bed when he could do that himself. Nobody can prove that Pio was not doing these poltergeist stunts himself for he was alone in the room. No God would let miracles happen that one could create oneself for if he would do that then we should believe in miracle-workers who accomplish feats that any magician can do easily. Pio was not the miracle man he had people thinking he was.

 

It is interesting that Pio who acted so determined to hide his stigmata did not gag himself to stop shouting at the demons and screaming so that nobody would know what was going on. He was conniving and manipulative. The fact that suspicion regarding the source of the wounds hangs over him shows that the faithful are dallying with demons for risks like that should not be taken for God says he comes first.

 

In 1964, Pio shouted out in his cell one evening at 10pm. The monks ran to his aid and found him in his cell with a gash on his head claiming that it was inflicted during a battle with Satan who had been trying to scrape his eyes out. Pio admitted that Satan could inflict wounds. Interesting. And there is no doubt that Jesus who said that you have to hide your prayers and good works in the Sermon on the Mount would not think much of a man who had to tell people that the Devil was to blame for his head wound for that is the same as saying, “I am such an important person in the Church and such a good man that the Devil himself came up from Hell to knock me about”. Satan would die with embarrassment if Pio had been going about with no eyes for it would be practically advertising Pio as a man of God. Satan was slandered. It was either a poltergeist that caused the wounds not Satan or Pio did it himself.

 

If we have any logic at all, we will see Pio as engaging in self-harm and lying about it.