Posted on 09/23/2012 12:51:01 PM PDT by marshmallow
Padre Pio (1887-1968) affords a striking modern instance of stigmata.
He was born Francesco Forgione into a peasant family at Pietrelcina, north-east of Naples. His parents lacked nothing in devotion, attending Mass daily, saying the rosary nightly and fasting three times a week. Although illiterate, they knew the gospels well, and passed on their knowledge to the children. (Francesco had an elder brother, Jack, and three younger sisters.)
By the age of five Francesco was exclusively religious. For play, he would sing hymns, pray and pretend to be a priest. For conversation, he turned to Jesus, the Virgin and his guardian angel. For combat, he fought off the attacks of the Devil. He was a solitary child.
At 10, Francesco heard a Capuchin preach and decided that he wanted to be a friar, “with a beard”. The local friary, however, demanded that he be further educated. His father, in order to finance a private tutor, went to work in America.
And so, in 1903, at the age of 15, Francesco took the habit of the Order of Friars Minor, assuming the name of Pius in religion, in honour of Pope Pius V, who had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I.
In September 1910, after his ordination the previous month, Pius experienced pains in his hands and feet. He asked for his wounds – “an annoyance” – to be taken away, and found his prayer granted. “I do want to suffer,” he explained, “even to die of suffering, but all in secret.”
In 1911 Pius, apparently sick, was sent home from the monastery. It would be another five years before he was ordered to return to community life.
In August 1917 Pius was called up into the Italian Medical Corps; by October he had been placed in hospital himself. Early in 1918 he.....
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicherald.co.uk ...
Anemia? Lack of clotting agents?
I’ve often wondered about this stigmata that appear on the hands. Wasn’t Jesus nailed through the wrists? Just wondering!
No, a validation of a saintly man. Read the lives of other stigmatists like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Theresa of Avila
Oh.
Just the sort of thing an evil demon would come up with to mock believers.
Of course it's a deliberate fake by a charlatan.
Took care of that pretty quick, but had to learn how to update Wikipedia to do it.
Like you mocking something you know little about?
Not a single Italian bakery in Jersey that doesn’t have a Padre Pio poster!
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Go ask the Italian and international medical teams many of whom were atheists who attested to this phenomenon. Other saints like St. Theresa of Avila and St. Francis Assisi experienced the same wounds of the Christ.
A semantic analysis showed that the original language used a noun that considered the hand and the wrist as one. In fact, I know a person from a third-world country who uses “hand” to mean all the way up to the shoulder, although if you pin her down she will acknowledge the modern hand ends somewhere short of that.
Nevertheless, it has been shown in modern research that the two palms can support the weight of the entire body (I think it was a National Geographic special of some kind), and if ropes are tied at the wrist in addition there is really no question at all. So I don’t think the precise anatomical location of the stigmata can be taken to disprove the miracle (especially when it already has been approved by the Church).
I had no idea that he died today.
I wish there was a good movie about him, I’ve tried 2 or 3 and they don’t appeal to my 60 Minutes/Fox News investigative journalism news consumer tastes. To touchy-feely for me.
But I do love reading about him. I have a picture of him in my office.
He was one of the great Saints of the 20th Century, that’s for sure.
Thank you for this information.
“Padre Pio, Please pray for our country, and pray that our leaders keep the devil at bay!”
‘Go ask the Italian and international medical teams many of whom were atheists who attested to this phenomenon”
I read years ago that the shrine at Lourdes prefers to have atheist doctors examine the patients who come there to determine if any cures they enjoy are “miraculous”.
>>>Lack of clotting agents?>>>
No, because then he would have bled to death internally.
I'm not Catholic, so I am looking at the issue almost like a forensic detective. In 1917 anybody wanting to make fake stigmata would have thought of the palm of the hand. That is one of the reasons I believe the Shroud is authentic, it does not match the preconceived ideas of Renaissance Italy.
I have read that the Shroud marks on the wrist were described as “rope burns”, but could be wrong. Thanks for your forensic input!
You contradict yourself. If it's a demonic miracle then it's not a fake by a charlatan. It's either supernatural or it's a man-made fake. Can't be both.
The amount of evidence supporting the truth of St. Pio's stigmata, as well and the testimony of miracles related to Pio, is so overwhelming as to be undeniable to all but the ignorant and willfully blind. 
A puzzle is that his hands were bleeding but research seems to indicate the wounds of Jesus were in his wrists.
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