Was Padre Pio a Fraud?

[Marc_Anthony]

But what we cannot argue against is the fact that the stigmata of this canonized saint have been acknowledged by Holy Church.

In this scenario Blessed Pope John Paul II was not speaking in any official capacity as Pope, only addressing a group of Pilgrims. He was not exercising any teaching authority.

I am NOT saying Padre Pio had no Stigmata-only that we don’t HAVE to believe he had Stigmata. As for what I believe, I tend to believe that Saint Padre Pio was genuine, although I do have a few reservations. I don’t think he was a liar or a fraud, and I tend to believe in his Stigmata. I do, however, have some suspicions about a few supposed miracles, such as bi-location. I’m also not sure of how I feel about him throwing people out of Confession.

 

[Cristiano]

True. We can also freely choose to believe that s. Padre Pio was “obviously not mentally and physically well most of his life”.

But what we cannot argue against is the fact that the stigmata of this canonized saint have been acknowledged by Holy Church.

From this address of bl. Pope John Paul II:

In all fairness I never saw anywhere that the Church acknowledged the stigmata as something supranatural. The Church simply acknowledged the presence of the wounds.

 

[Luvtosew]

You can really pick and choose. There are some crazy people that believe that a guy that died on a cross was able to go someplace in the sky (heaven???) by himself. How can the body of someone that died on a cross float up in the air?

Father Pio was not dead and he is not God, but yes he was physically ill most of his life , TB also , and I do beleive very eccentric in thought as many mystics are. I remember reading quite a bit on his, and there was a lot of controversy. Is it possible he did it to himself as many did do self mutilation and wanted suffering? He may not even remember doing it to himself.

As far as the visions go as proof of anythng as one can see hundreds of Christs pic’s everywhere, their visions may have been very real to them, but many people have visions , we can close our eyes and have a vision of Christ also. Or close our eyes and see our parents face or whatever.

And frankly yes I can and do pick what I believe or don’t believe and you should as well. Like I said I have no issue with what you believe, I feel sorry for him really as it sounds like he led a painful life, but we can know he is being rewarded for his service now.

 

[devonsams]

Let’s examine the possibilities:

1- It was all true, and he was really a saint, then there’s nothing to worry about it.
2- He was mad all this time, faking stigmatas, and it was a mental problem, then we don’t have to worry about it. But that is improbable due he was never a crazy guy and he was very sane.
3- He was bad all this time, faking stigmatas, but what would he win? There are some people who says to have supernatural powers, but they gain money, and they travel around the world, and all this stuff. But Padre Pio spend almost all his life in the Church, everyday living a slave life. Would it sound plausible a man hiding a stigmata for 50 years, just to gain money and fame? But he would never, ever was able to spend his money with women and all this stuff. Then it sounds improbable.

Then it’s probably true, and probably God exists ;D

 

[Luvtosew]

Wow I detect a lot of anger , I’m sorry my opinions upset you so much, but people do have different opinions and I stick to mine, and if you don’t like it , thats too bad.

I would like to add, many people seem to think people are putting God down by not believing all these stories , this is my God too, so quit trying to include him in your opinion concerning a man , God is not compared to any man.

 

[R_C]

I do not know about the literal “bi-location”, but I do know that he is definitely not the only saint who experienced this peculiar grace. From Catholic Encyclopedia:

• Catholic philosophers maintain that there is no absolute impossibility in the same body being at once circumscriptively in one place and definitively elsewhere (mixed mode of location).

• Regarding the absolute possibility of a body being present circumscriptively in more than one place, St. Thomas, Vasquez, Silv. Maurus, and many others deny such possibility. The instances of bilocation narrated in lives of the saints can be explained, they hold, by phantasmal replications or by aerial materializations. Scotus, Bellarmine, Francisco Suárez, DeLugo, Franzelin, and many others defend the possibility of circumscriptive replication.

The “throwing out of the confessionary” is related to another grace called cardiognosis, described in the “Ascent to Mt. Carmel”. By doing so, he exercised the divine authority given to the apostles:

if you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.

He said many times that it was not his desire to do this, that he often wished to embrace the person, but that it was necessary for their conversion. It was a medicinal penance, similar to the more heavy penance of excommunication (reserved to bishops or to the Holy See).

St. John of the Cross, as penance, sometimes refused to give the Holy Eucharist…now that is quite a drastic mortification…compared to refusing to absolve someone who has not really repented. Only God knows how many times I have wished the confessor to not absolve me and to forbid me from receiving Holy Communion, that the pain would be sorrowful enough for me to eradicate a given vice or imperfection…but this has never happened, and the process of conversion is much more slower and painful…

 

[Marc_Anthony]

Wow I detect a lot of anger , I’m sorry my opinions upset you so much, but people do have different opinions and I stick to mine, and if you don’t like it , thats too bad.

I would like to add, many people seem to think people are putting God down by not believing all these stories , this is my God too, so quit trying to include him in your opinion concerning a man , God is not compared to any man.

Where on EARTH are you getting all of this from? I detect NO anger, nor do I see anybody trying to compare God to man. I’m sorry that most of the people here disagree with you. What do you expect? This is a Catholic forum. Nobody has said anything angry to you, and I’m not sure where you’re getting that idea.

 

[Cristiano]

Father Pio was not dead and he is not God, but yes he was physically ill most of his life , TB also , and I do beleive very eccentric in thought as many mystics are. I remember reading quite a bit on his, and there was a lot of controversy. Is it possible he did it to himself as many did do self mutilation and wanted suffering? He may not even remember doing it to himself.

As far as the visions go as proof of anythng as one can see hundreds of Christs pic’s everywhere, their visions may have been very real to them, but many people have visions , we can close our eyes and have a vision of Christ also. Or close our eyes and see our parents face or whatever.

And frankly yes I can and do pick what I believe or don’t believe and you should as well. Like I said I have no issue with what you believe, I feel sorry for him really as it sounds like he led a painful life, but we can know he is being rewarded for his service now.

You are correct to say that he was physically sick most of his life. He suffered terribly and he was attacked by the devil in several occasions, the attacks were spiritual and physical. I agree with you that a lot of mystics could appear weird to people like myself because I am a bad Christian and my spiritual maturity is extremely low.
However, you have to consider a few factors. The first is that he was not crazy, the Church is extremely sensitive to people with strange ideas and strange experiences, there are a lot of so called mystics that have been investigated and their experiences have been attributed to mental issues, and that never happened to Padre Pio. Padre Gemelli (he fought hard against the stigmata story) the founder of the hospital in Rome and other physiscians have investigated the wounds and while they disagreed about the supranatural causes they clearly proved that it was not the case of intentional or unintentional fraud as you seem to suggest. I think that to discount all the analysis done by the scientist (including agnostic ones) is just being cavalier with evidence just to espouse a personal opinion. One thing that must be explained is the possibility of a wound being completely healed in 17 hours from it last documented evidence to the moment of Padre Pio’s death, how can the body that is shutting down provide enough resources to completely heal and leave no scars in such a period of time. Maybe I am ignorant but my understanding is that the Church has never made an official statement in regard to the supranatural cause of the stigmata, a lot of people believed in such cause but that it is not the reason why Padre Pio was canonized.

 

[inkaneer]

I was talking to my friend and he said: “It is an absurd the Catholic Church gives Sainthood to a man who says that he had christ stigmatas, and he supposedly made miracles, how can I pray to him if maybe he was a bad guy who wanted all his life fame, and he was faking all of this to become famous and become a saint? I don’t feel comfortable to pray to a man who was maybe a bad guy and was pretending and playing with people all this time.”
Please how can i answer this to him? He is a catholic.

Padre Pio is a 20th century saint whose stigmata is the most fully documented and verified by competent medical authoroities. So ask your friend where he is getting his information. Then you can ask him how he can explain how Padre Pio exhibited the wounds of the Stigmata up to his actual death and it was only after he died that the wounds healed. How do wounds heal after a person has already died?