Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (296 page)

Pater Pio was staying on his parents' farm to convalesce. On 20th September, 1915, when his mother called him to lunch, he came out of a hut in the vineyard, 'waving his hands about as if they were burnt'. His mother asked what had happened and Pio answered that all he could feel were slight pricking pains. But according to the book which bears the highest ecclesiastical imprimatur, 'Pater Pio had really received invisible stigmata'. The invisible marks later began to bleed while he was sitting in the last row of the choir with his fellow brothers. When Pio stepped forward, his hands bled, there were stigmata on his feet and a deep cut in his right side.

'Pater Pio e un santo' cried the multitude. Pater Pio is a saint.

Photographs of the stigmata reached the Holy Office. (Today the Office of the Congregation of the Faith, formerly the Holy Inquisition.) Pater Pio was ordered to undergo medical examination and so still the curiosity of the faithful. Doctors examined him and sealed bandages over the wounds. They finally stated that 'this kind of lesion was beyond the comprehension of science'. Pater Pio lost a cup full of blood every day. Every day he wore brown gloves over the visible lesions.

Apparently Pater Pio possessed all the faculties that science now sums up under the heading of 'parapsychological phenomena.' He was visionary and prophet, telekinetist and telepathist, wonder-worker and long-distance healer all in one. Pater Pio could not speak a word of English, but he understood what American children said to him. He knew in advance what the penitent children who were ripe for penance would confess or keep silent from him. He told one man to his face that he harboured thoughts of killing his wife. In the case of a woman who was faced with a major gynaecological operation, the haemorrhages stopped spontaneously, and Pater Pio prophesied that she would give birth to a son. A year later she brought the boy to him in the monastery.

Alberto de Fante, the official chronicler of San Giovanni Rotondo, relates that a man prayed for help at Pio's confessional box for his nephew who was at death's door and had been given up by the doctors.

Twenty-four hours later the nephew was well again; an 'undeniable' cure had taken place.

A woman wanted to speed up the appointment given her by the booking-office for three days hence -

Pio was always booked up for weeks ahead - but when she was pushing her way through the crowd and weeping bitterly, Pater Pio stopped her and told her to go home quickly, for everything would be all right. When the woman got home, her husband, for whom she had been going to intercede, was cured.

The number of 'miraculous' reports is large. Once a man left the monastery in the evening after confession and was faced with a cloudburst. He waited, because he did not want to get soaked. Then Pater Pio approached him and told him not to worry, for he would accompany him. When the stranger reached his inn, people wondered why he had not got drenched through. The innkeeper understood at once: 'Of course, if Pater Pio was with you ...' But Pater Pio was also able to do magic the opposite way round. One winter morning a female penitent arrived at the monastery in a downpour of rain. Pio touched her on the shoulder and to her astonishment the signora's clothes 'were bone dry in a moment'.

Bilocation * was obviously also within Pater Pio's powers. The authoress of the approved account says that the father could 'pass through closed doors' to the great astonishment of the crowd who were