BELIEF IN PADRE PIO IS COUNTER-INTUITIVE FOR HE IS ASSOCIATED WITH TOO MANY MIRACLES
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. His wonders are not like those of Jesus but seem to be about self-glory. Instead of curing lepers all the time he liked appearing to people even when he was alive!
I would caution against taking Pio's miracles seriously.
Pio supposedly got the stigmata on 20 September 1918 while praying in the morning. He told nobody about this until the middle of the following month. He opened up to Father Benedetto. It seems he didn't even tell his spiritual directors (page 21, Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age). This secrecy is not a good sign. The Church following St John of the Cross warns against protecting wonders from Church scrutiny for one needs to be protected from Satan using paranormal manipulations.
Anyway as a monk he was forced to submit for examination. The fact is Monsignor Rossi examined his hands and found this, "The 'stigmata' on the hands are very visible, and caused, I think by a bloody exhudation. There is no opening or breaking up of the tissues, at least on his palms. It might be said there is on the back of the hands, even though I don't think there is, but then it must be agreed that the hypothetical opening doesn't penetrate through the hand cavity and doesn't come out on the palm." Padre Pio Under Investigation.
He sees what looks like some kind of bloody sweat. A cynic would say that he took that for granted for he believed Pio was not taking blood and simply applying it to the hands. Pio despite having no real wounds pretended to be in pain, "How much I have felt the burden of obedience today."
If the truth about Pio's marks is so boring then how could the extravagant stories about him and his wonders be true?
Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age page 28 reveals that even some believers in Pio's stigmata and integrity were complaining about the circle of people around him including the Capuchin friars he lived with daring to encourage superstitious belief in his powers and even using force to make people believe and tell fairytales about him. Indeed public order problems did arise because of the differences between the gullible believers and the unbelievers and the saner believers. Pio himself was asked by Monsignor Rossi about his power to be in two places at the one time and to heal people etc (page 102, Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age). Pio replied that these were not proven and that he was glad he still had his reason after all the nonsense that took place. Clearly he was unsure if his prayers really healed people but as for the bilocations they were nonsense.
St Padre Pio has done too many miracles that remind one of showing off and conjuring tricks for comfort. There have been countless reports about the miracle perfume, appearing in dreams, Pio being in two places at the one time and healings. He was supposed to have the power to read minds but there would be no market for fortune tellers without similar claims. Such miracles are an insult to Pio if he really wanted, as he said, to hide his miracle powers and avoid appearing special. They also insult God’s dignity. God will only do a miracle as a sign for he cannot do a miracle just to fix errors for he doesn’t make any errors. He is almighty and in control. So God will only do miracles when the forces are in motion for the verification of the miracle by science and the Church. Too many showy miracles are taken to be a sign of suspicion of satanic agency among true Christians. Theologians say Jesus in the gospels only did practical miracles such as healing and avoided showing off and doing absurd miracles. But Pio has been the locum of more miracles than Jesus ever was and most of them are outrageous and that is suspicious.
Catholic doctrine says, "God has supposedly arranged nature as it is. He does not make mistakes but he occasionally does miracles to give evidence of his presence and to direct people to religious and spiritual truth." So a miracle will only take place in the context of evidence and for the sake of being evidence. What if Pio did a few well-substantiated miracles and the other alleged or suspected miracles are not as convincing or are just hearsay? The miracles cannot both command evidence and not command them. The unconvincing ones actually refute the convincing ones. It is just like how in court you can have terrific evidence for something and something happens that undermines it all.
The magazine La Settimana Incom Illustrata after claimed that Pio predicted that Roncalli would become Pope. Angelo Roncalli became Pope John XXIII in 1958 the year before the magazine published the alleged prophecy. Unfortunately the prophecy comes after the event. There is no evidence that it was made before the event or even that Pio really made the prophecy (page 263, Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age). The claim that Roncalli secretly visited Pio in 1956 and didn't let the cat out of the bag until Pope Pius XII died in 1958 is pure invention. John XXIII went to the trouble of declaring that in writing (page 278, Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age).
Jesus warned about signs and wonders that could deceive even the elect - if this does not refer to miracles with inadequate proof then his warning was meaningless.
Pio by silence gave consent to his aggrandizement
Padre Pio has caused a lot of trouble. During his life, many totally reliable people and even the Church said they knew he was a hard-faced weirdo. He never repudiated the aura of sainthood he was invested with. He encouraged it and cultivated his popularity by building hospitals and screaming in his cell at night and claiming to have been attacked by Satan. He never said his claimed stigmata and miracles and his ability to be in two places at the one time should be forgotten about. A truly self-effacing saint would. Thus Pio was saying that a person could be condemned by everybody and by those in authority and who should be considered in a position of knowing and still be a misunderstood saint. This attitude has poisoned the Catholic chalice and promoted religious personality cults in the Church.
Pio lowered the standard. Today we have frauds like Christina Gallagher of Achill who mimic Pio and who have been thoroughly exposed by the media and by people in authority. Even her bishop didn't recognise her as a true visionary. Despite all the scandal, many of her followers stand by her and continue to give her loads of money to keep her in her opulent lifestyle which of course they pretend didn't exist. She continues to deceive and her faithful continue to kid themselves. Her followers typically cite the case of Pio who was condemned by Church authorities and proclaimed a fraud as evidence of how crafty Satan is and how he sets it up so that truly holy mystics like Pio and Gallagher will look like hypocrites and charlatans when they are in fact genuine prophets of God. The result is that millions are being led astray by frauds like Gallagher. Pio cast the die and lowered the standard and the result is that vulnerable people are being lied to and severed from their life savings. If that is not a bad fruit then what is? Pio's work was not from God.
In relation to Pio, we can definitely agree that if a person is not part of the solution then they are part of the problem. He is no help or inspiration in a world riddled with religious frauds.
Pio's Alleged Miracles
The hypocrisy of believing those who cleared Pio and of believing the twelve apostles who give no evidence of telling the exact same story about the resurrection and who were never tried in court is obvious – another of the endless bad fruits that come from belief in miracles for Pio would have wanted people to think that his miracles pointed to the main doctrines of Christianity which are that Jesus died for sins and rose again. If there was a supernatural being doing the miracles through Pio then this being was the Devil for the miracles were never intended to create a saint – it just happened that Pio ended up on the canonisation decree.
Miracles like this will one day destroy the faith for reason will triumph in the end.
The Duchess of St. Albans wrote, "Magic of a Mystic Stories of Padre Pio". A girl, Gemma di Giorg, born without pupils began to see when she was on the train to San Giovanni. Her grandmother was with her. They were going to Pio. Believers falsely allege that when Pio met them he healed the girl. The girl still had no pupils so we can safely assume that this was no miracle but a fluke of nature.
Miracles are said to call you to submit to a body of doctrine supposedly revealed by God. Many cults boast that miracles back them up meaning that the spreading of belief in miracles is really about trying to enslave you to other peoples’ opinions. Any religion can use miracles to get followers so the esteem people like Pio have is desperately misplaced and dangerous. Pretend your mother is in a poor country where women have bad medical care. Do you want her to die rather than have an abortion to save her life? You will if you respect the likes of Padre Pio having who sought to bring the world under the spell of the pope. Pio often declared that his miracles and good deeds were motivated to bringing people to obey the pope and the Church in all their teaching for what they say is God’s will. This means that to accept Pio you can’t be a cafeteria Catholic like most of Pio’s devotees are so he has failed to change them and that is a bad fruit especially since Catholics vow at their baptism and confirmation to accept without reserve the will of God as spoken through the Church.
There is actual and potential. As regards being a good person, potential is more important than actual for you won’t act good unless you have the potential to be good. Catholics like to encourage people to believe in miracles on account of the actual good fruits that follow the events. But it is the potential that matters the most so miracles that have bad implications are simply evil sorceries or frauds.
Miracles are intended to be a cause of faith according to Church doctrine. Any character, and Pio claimed to be one, who experiences them all the time has a substitute for the virtue of faith. The Church always said that apparitions should be short and sweet to prevent that happening and yet people like Pio have been canonised. The reason the Church says that God gives us sufficient evidence but not too much is so that we will have genuine charity and be sure that we do good because it is good. If you know the faith is true you can’t be sure of your motives for we never know ourselves very well at the best of times. And if you know there is a Hell it is impossible to do good with a totally selfless attitude. We conclude then that the canonisations of stigmatists who had constant visions and miracles, Padre Pio, Gemma Galgani, Francis of Assisi, Maria Maddalena de Pazzi, Mary Frances of the Five Wounds, Margaret Mary Alacoque, Veronica Guiliani, Rita of Cascia, Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Genoa and Catherine of Siena are null and void. These saints have destroyed the faith. Faith is the main and essential good fruit so any other good fruit cannot compensate for its disappearance. Interestingly, what we have just read means that Jesus was from the Devil if he did such prolific miracle working for he destroyed the faith of the apostles and gave them knowledge instead. The apostles with the knowledge that their faith and their motives were destroyed were evil men who hid their vice as well as some “holy” fake stigmatists did.
Pio and the Perfumes
The blood from Pio's allegedly miraculous wounds was perfumed - the smell should have been rancid if he really had the long-term wounds he said he had. He must have used eau-de-cologne for the allegedly miraculous fragrance.
Incredibly the Who is Padre Pio? booklet claims that Pio occasionally exuded the smell of tobacco! And it adds that the smell was faint at times and strong at other times. Pio claimed he didn't smoke. And that proves to believers that the tobacco smell was a miracle. How persuasive! How scientific!
Pio did nothing to hide the smell though his followers boast about how humble he was and hated attention and was even ashamed of his stigmata. They might say Pio could not disguise the smell for it was a miracle but that is too hard to believe. God would not pull off such mundane stunts. When saints have an aroma (you will understand why I do not designate the smell of tobacco as an aroma!) it is regarded as a special miracle marking out a man as so holy that even his body smells nice even though he has not been using scent. Pio had no problem then with this tobacco substitute for an “I am holy and humble” tattoo on the forehead.
One thing is for sure when a person has a nice smell that is supposedly a miracle you can be sure that it is not. No sensible God would do such a mundane and easily duplicated miracle. Those who believe in this miracle are making the same mistake as those who say that the miracles of super-psychics are real though there are professional magicians who can do exactly the same things by trickery. Their prejudice and selectiveness is disturbing and Pio, like many others, is to blame for that. He and they didn’t think much of their all-wise God.
The demonic Jesus of Pio
Pio would not identify the being that gave him the stigmata as Jesus at first. He did that in time. Jesus is cruel if he directly hurts somebody like that.
During a talk with Jesus one time, Jesus said of bad priests and religious, "How many times I was about to strike them, if the angels and the souls who love me had not stopped me." So the truly good beings are influencing this immature Jesus?
What does it say of Pio if he worshipped that?