Who was Padre Pio, and why is he the cause of such controversy?
An uneducated Capuchin friar from the town of San Giovanni Rotondo in the Gargano peninsula of Puglia, southern Italy, Padre Pio became the most charismatic holy man in the modern history of the Catholic Church, widely hailed as a saint during his lifetime and credited with at least 1,000 miracle cures. The most famous signs of his claimed sanctity were the stigmata – the Christ-like wounds that he bore in the palms of his hands and his side. So why has his rest been disturbed? “To check on the state of the body and to carry out all the necessary work to guarantee the best conditions for its conservation,” according to the local archbishop, Domenico Umberto D’Ambrosio. The corpse probably will remain on display in a crystal casket until Christmas, when it will be interred permanently in a magnificent sarcophagus in the crypt of the church erected at the centre of his cult. During his lifetime, Padre Pio could hardly lift a finger without causing controversy, and the same remains true 4
