Excellent article. The stories about Padre Pio should be spread far and wide in the West. Although nearly unknown in the West, the role of a spiritual father is well known in the East and spiritual fathers with the abilities of Padre Pio are alive and well on the Holy Mountain, throughout Russia and the ME and reportedly even here in No. America. They play a major role in the lives of not only the laity but indeed in the lives of clergy, other monastics and even the hierarchs.
If anyone doubts that Padre Pio understood languages he didn’t speak and was heard by his spiritual children in their own languages which he couldn’t speak, or that he knew what they had come to see him for, or that he communicated with them through their guardian angels, they can experoence these very things right now with monastic spiritual fathers in the Eastern Church.
I sincerely hope and pray that monasteries in the West begin to produces dozens of “Padre Pios”.
Indeed, the author cites the very same example. The above book is one I think you could appreciate and enjoy. It is scrupulously documented.