THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO #5 OF 25

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 5 OF 25

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - WED. MAR. 28/18

    From the book, "Padre Pio: The True Story (Revised and expanded) by C. Bernard Ruffin)", Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Indiana, 46750

Preface:

    The 'God is Everything Family' (Padre Pio's Parents and Where They Lived) -  25-28

"Maria Giuseppa De Nunzio, the only child of Fortunato De Nunzio and Maria Giovanna Gagliardi, was a year and a half her husband's senior, born on March 28, 1859. It is said that being of "good family" some of her relatives disapproved of her match with humble Grazio.

    She had light blue eyes and was as tall as her husband.... Like her husband, she was extremely devout. As an act of mortification, she abstained from eating meat on Wednesday and Saturdays, as well as the then-obligatory Fridays.... She prefaced all plans with, "If God is willing." Unlike many residences of small towns, "Zia Beppa" reused to gossip or to criticize people behind their backs. Likewise, those who knew her were struck by her intelligence and her sense of hospitality: "She was happier when she could give than when she could receive.

    "Gra: and "Beppa" were genuinely devoted to each other and to their children. Even by nineteenth-century Italian standards, Beppa was said to have been remarkably submissive to here husband, yet she was independent enough to manage the family alone during the years her husband was absent in America.She and Grad seemed to have been affectionate parents who spared the rod and relied upon the power of persuasion. Padre Pio remembered scoldings but never spankings. ...

    The Forgiones owned another "house" a few doors away, a single room called "The Tower," because it was accessed by steep treacherous steps and afforded a wonderful view of the rolling farmland. This served as the boy's bedroom. ... The lime-painted walls were adorned with crucifixes and lithographs of the Madonna and saints.  After the children were born, visitors were amazed at the great number of books onto a square table in the parents' bedroom. Although Gra and Bett were unlettered, they were determined that their children would get a good education, and provided for them accordingly. There were eventually eight children.... but on May 25, 1887, a fourth child entered the world and was given the name of his short-lived brother. This was the son who would be known to the world as Padre Pio.  ...

    When the Church bells rang at daybreak, the Forgione family rose for morning prayers. Then Grazio would saddle his donkey and start for the family plot in the area outside town known as the Pianna Romana. ... The Forgione farm was very small, by American standards - only five acres according to some accounts. It yielded grapes, wheat, Indian corn, olives, figs, and plums. Gra and Betta also raised sheep,goats, hens, ducks, rabbits, and occasionally kept a milch cow or two and some hogs... When water was needed, she fetched it from a nearby well in a huge jug, which she balanced on her head. Padre Pio maintained pleasant memories on the farm. ... Winters, the children when they were young, amused themselves playing in front of the parish church of St. Anna, sometimes called the Castle Church. Nights were enlivened by storytelling, both by their father and by their maternal grandmother, Giovanna Gagliardi, who lived nearby...

   

   Christ was the center of the Forgione family, who were so pious that their neighbors sometimes called them the "God-Is-Everything Family." The family was seen in Church every day, and evenings they knelt together to pray the rosary. The baby sister Graziella, who later became a nun, in later years recalled that in her childhood home, prayer became before anything else... Most of the stories the children were told came from Scripture. ... Of utmost importance to the Forgione family, were the Madonna and the saints, who were seen almost as members of the family.... It was inconceivable to the Forgiones that a Christian could fail to love and honor the Blessed Virgin. It was doubtless from his childhood training that Padre Pio derived his love of the Madonna, whom he was to describe as "more beautiful and more resplendent than the sun ... a most pure crystal that can only reflect God."

George H.Kubeck

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 6 OF 25

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE # 6 OF 25

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    From the book, "Padre Pio: The True Story (Revised and Expanded) by C. Bernard Ruffin)," Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Indiana, 46750

Chapter 2: "IL Bello Francesco" 29-33

     "Nobody was very much interested in preserving the details of the childhood of the farm boy who became Padre Pio until he was widely regarded as saint.... According to relatives and neighbors, Franci was an unusually beautiful baby, and as a little boy, with blond hair and brown eyes, "he was so beautiful he looked like an angel." Neighbors referred to him as "il bello Francesco"("beautiful Francis"), as much for his temperament as his appearance. ...

   
 Contrary to popular belief, Franci, as a child, enjoyed normal health. When he was two, however, he suffered from stomach problems his mother took him to the local witch, fearing that someone had put the "evil eye" on the child. The witch, according to Padre Pio, "took me by the legs and held me upside down {as if} I were a lamb," making nine crosses over his stomach, massaging it, and chanting weird formulae. The treatment seemed to work....

Pietrelcina offered but three years of schooling in the 1890s. Classes were held at night so that the children could work during the day. Michele never liked school, but Francesco was an eager student. His first teacher was Cosimo Scocca, a fourteen-year-old boy from the next farm. The next two years, Franci was instructed by Mandato Saginario, who worked by day as a rope-maker.... At baptism Beppa dedicated Franci (a she probably did the other children) to Christ and to the Virgin Mary. Then, when he was five,m she encouraged him to dedicate himself to his Lord, tok the Blessed Mother, as well as to his patron saint, Francis of Assisi. Some recall the Mammella Forgione had a wall placard made showing a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, beneath which was written the date on which each of her children made a personal commitment to the Lord.

   
 So Franci Forgione eagerly appropriately the religious values instilled in by his parents. From the time he could walk, he was always asking to be taken to church. He liked to hear stories about Christ, Mary and the saints, and he was precociously aware of sin. One day when he was a very little boy, he was walking with his mother past a field of turnips. When Mammella remarked, "Look at those beautiful turnips. I'd sure like to eat some," Franci, with grave and solemn demeanor, looked up at her and said sternly, "That's a sin." A few days later, however, when mother and son were walking past a stand of fig trees, Franci begged his mother to pluck some figs. "Wait a minute now," she said. "It was a sin to eat the turnips, now it's a sin to eat the figs!" ...

  
 The reaction of the Forgione children was, in fact, one instilled by their mother, who insisted that they immediately leave the company of any child who cursed or swore. In fact, whenever Giuseppa heard anyone blaspheme, she would "repair" it with the expression, "Blest be God!"a practice she tried to instill in all her children. ... The young Forgione early revealed a deep concern for the poor and sick.... he accompanied his mother on one of her frequent errands of charity and saw poor peasants without adequate food, clothing, and shelter.

   
 When Franci was eight, he witnessed an event that remained indelibly imprinted in his mind for the rest of his life ... On this day, August 25, 1895, Franci and Tata witnessed a spectacle equally tasteless but with unforgetable results. Crowded into the Church of St. Pellegrino, ... Franci and his father, along with other worshippers, were startled by the piercing shrieks of a "raging, disheveled woman" who forced herself up to the altar where the statue of the martyred bishop (St. Pellegrino) stood. In her arms, the woman held her deformed and retarded son, who ceaselessly emitted a horrible, raucous sound that resembled the graaak of a crow. Hysterical the mother implored the saint to heal her child. 

When nothing happened and the child, his huge deformed head hanging listlessly, continued his obscene and pathetic litany - "Graak! Graak! Graak!" - the mother, with bloodcurling shriek and with gruesome oaths, began to curse the saint, finally shrieking, "Why don't you cure him? Well keep him he is yours!" With that she threw the child at the statue. He hit the image, bounced off, and crashed to the floor. Then to everyone's stupefaction, the child, who had never walked or talked before, got up and ran to his mother, crying, in a clear and normal voice, "Mother! Mother!" ...                             

Happy Easter, George Kubeck                                   

THIS MOST UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE" # 2 OF 12

THIS MOST UNHAPPY BOOK REPORT ON "THE POLITICAL POPE" # 2 OF 12

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP:W.W.W.CINOPSBEGONE BLOGSPOT.COM - THURS. MAR. 22/18

PREFACE:

    This is the second in a series of direct excerpts from the book by George Neumayr titled "The Political Pope" - How Pope Francis is delighting the Liberal Left and Abandoning Conservatives, Center Street, New York, Nashville, 2017

Chapter One - The Pope They Have Been Waiting For  4-6

"Leonardo Boff, who has long gloried in his status as renegade theologian from Brazil, also enjoyed a stunning change of fortune after the election of Pope Francis. Owing to his open Marxism, Boff was silenced by Pope John Paul II's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith... Pope Francis recruited him to serve as an adviser for Laudato Si', his 2015 encyclical endorsing the political agenda of climate change activists....

"The Holy Father has given his benevolent assent that Father Miguel d"EscotoBrockman be absoved from the canonical censure inflicted upon him, and entrusts him to the superior general of the institute (Maryknoll) for the purpose of accompanying him in the process of reintegration into the ministerial priesthood," announced the Vatican.

D'Escoto, among his other Marxist activities, had served as an official at the aforementioned KGB-controlled World Council of Churches. No sooner had Pope Francis granted d"Escoto request than the recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize resumed his Marxist polemics, calling capitalism the "most un-Christian doctrine and practice ever devised by man to keep us separate and unequal in a kind of global apartheid."

He condemned Pope John Paul II for an "abuse of authority" and rhapsodized about Fidel Castro as an inspired figure whose murderous regime heralded the "the reign of God on this earth that is the alternative to the empire." Even now as priest in good standing under Pope Francis, d'Escoto lobbies for the Libyans, remains a member of the Sandinasta National Liberation Front, and continues to serve as an adviser to Daniel Ortega, whom the Soviets planted in the presidency of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

According to Boff, Pope Francis will eventually rehabilitate all of the liberation theologians from Latin America. Boff believes that Pope Francis is waiting until their old critic, Pope Benedict XVI, dies. " I believe that as long as the retired pope lives, he will neither reconcile nor redeem these theologians," according to Boff. "But, when he is himself, he will rescue THE 500 THEOLOGIANS whose heads were severed. I believe this pope is capable of dismantling this machine of punishment and control, and leave it to local churches...

At a time of widespread moral relativism and assault on marriage, his 2014-2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family served not to strengthen the Church's stances but to weaken them. For the first time in the history of the Church, a pope approved of Catholics in a state of adultery. He also AUTHORIZED  his aides to float unprecedented proposals in favor of blessing the "positive aspects" of gay relationships and couples living together outside of marriage.

Amidst this doctrinal confusion. many cardinals are beginning to feel buyer's remorse. "The more he talks, the worse he gets, says a Vatican official who asked to remain anonymous, in an interview for this book."Many bishops and cardinals are terrified to speak out' but they are in a state of apoplexy. The atmosphere is so politicized and skewed. The Church is becoming unrecognizable."...

"These are dark times," Bishop Anthanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan hassaid. The liberalism of this pontificate, he argues, is exposing the faithful to "spiritual danger" and creating he conditions for the "fast and easy spreading of heterodox doctrines." ...

George H. Kubeck

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 3 OF 25

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 3 OF 25

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - THURS. MAR. 15/18

PREFACE:

    From the book, "Padre Pio:The True Story (Revised and Expanded) by C. Bernard Ruffin, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1991"

PROLOGUE: THE SECOND FRANCIS - 18-20

"It also cannot be denied that thousand of individuals have testified to his mysticalcharismata.... One thing is certain Padre Pio cannot be dismissed lightly. There are basically only four conclusions that may be drawn concerning the Capuchin priest and his ministry:

First, one may conclude that Padre Pio is one of the greatest frauds of history, a showman, perhaps in league with Satan, a magician capable of humbugging the public to a degree unimagined even by P.T. Barnum.

Second, one may conclude that Padre Pio was in large measure a product of the superstitious of an ignorant and gullible peasantry who read into the life of a simple, holy priest what they wanted to see, building around him a cult of mindless self-delusion.

Third, one may conclude that Padre Pio was a madman, a pathetic creature, hysterical and possibly schizophrenic, who remained out the mental institution by his clever ability to convince thousands of people that his delusions were reality.

If none of there three scenarios be true, then one must conclude that Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was one of the most significant figures in Christian history, a man of prophetic and apostolic stature, who through great personal holiness and enlightened wisdom and through spiritual gifts inexplicable by science, tended to confirm the truth of the Gospel and the veracity of historical Christianity to and indifferent and unbelieving age: a man capable of conveying to an extraordinary extent of God's love and care; an evangelist who never conducted a crusade, and who without travelling more than a few miles from his friary in fifty years, yet seemed capable of transforming lives to a degree unimagined by the most successful evangelical preachers.

Padre Pio's life is remarkably well-supported by good evidence. Admittedly, there are problems. Padre Alessio Parente, who worked closely with Padre Pio during the last years of his life, has said, "We didn't have time to write things down. At night we were so stressed and so tired that we didn't have five minutes to put a pen in our hands. We went straight to bed....

Father Dominic Meyer, who served as Padre Pio's secretary for many years, in a 1961 review of a Padre Pio biography, wrote, "As to newspaper accounts: how often have not the superior of Padre Pio been asked to clarify statements by journalists that were positively false, exaggerated misrepresentation of the truth...

The life of Padre Pio is, to be sure, a life replete with events that seem strange, even incredible to the average reader, but it is also a life of a real human being with real emotions, real joy, real sorrows, and real defects, who strove to serve his fellow human beings in his day. the following pages tell his story."

George H. Kubeck

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 4 OF 25

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 4 OF 25

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM- SUN. MAR. 18/18

  From the book, "Padre Pio: The True Story (Revised and Expanded) by C. Bernard Ruffin), Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1991, Huntington, Indiana, 46750

Preface:

 The 'God Is Everything Family' (Padre Pio's Parents and Where They Lived) - 21-25

"Pietrelcina, a village of about four thousand souls, lies about six miles northeast of the of Benevento, which gives its name to the province in a region of southern Italy known as Campania. Over the years, Pietrelcina, which grew up around a premedieval castle, has been called Petrapolcina, Petrapolicina, ... and only since the eighteenth century, Pietra Elcina or Pietrelcina. Nobody knows for sure what the name means, although some local scholars think it means either Little Rock or Oak Rock....

   The census returns of 1881 revealed that out of every one thousand inhabitants, there were only forty-six sharecroppers and only fifty-nine peasant proprietors. Moat of the people were landless peasants, employed seasonally as farm laborers, who lived from hand to mouth. These people subsisted largely on a vegetarian diet of rice, bread, pasta, and cornmeal, and were generally so unhealthy that few of their young men were found fit for military service. Malaria, pellagra, and tuberculosis were endemic, child mortality was astronomical, and every few thousands of people died in epidemics of cholera.

    Pietrelcina was in many ways was typical of the region. The village was isolated, two miles from the nearest railroad, which was its only communication with the outside world, as there were no roads, not even to Benevento...The day at Pietrelcina was punctuated by the striking of the church bell marking the various periods of prayer specified by local devotion. The year was highlighted by numerous saints' days. Few towns in the region observed so many religious feasts as Pietrelcina....The Pulcinari (as the inhabitants f Pietrelcina were called) celebrated the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel on April 8, walking to the nearby village of Torre, five miles away, to make their confessions, hear Mass, then eat, drink, and enjoy the performance of local bands, gathering flowers, as they returned home to strew over the statue of the archangel in the  parish church of Pietrelcina. Devotion to Mary was especially strong in Pietrelcina....

    The deep piety of the world in which Padre Pio passed his  boyhood was also shot through with superstition. People spoke of a special prayer or combination of prayers, which, if repeated in a certain way, would enable one to predict the day of his death....  A resident of Pietrelcina, who as a slightly younger contemporary of Padre Pio, described her town: "It was all farms in Pietrelcina. For us, Benevento was the big city. That's all we knew. We dressed like people in America. We did not have arranged marriages. We didn't wear local costumes [Except on special occasions] but all our clothing was handmade. We never closed our doors. We had not running water or plumbing.

    Grazio Maria  Forgione was the father of Padre Pio. Born on October 22, 1860, he spent most of his childhood in the household of his steofather Celestino Orlando, who married his mother shortly after the death of Michele. Although he was baptized Grazio, Padre Pio's father was known most of his life as Orazio. As we shall see, Forgione spent many years working in America, and it was there he learned to sign his name....

  On June 8, 1881, Grazio Forgione, now twenty years old donned the local costume - a double trimmed with gold buttons, knee stockings adorned with white ribbons, and white shoes, and was escorted by his step-father to the home of Maria Giuseppa De Nuncio, who was to be his bride...

Thus did Grazio Forgione and Giuseppa De Nuncio commence their 48 years of married life....

    In a society in which men typically went to Mass only at Easter, and possibly at Christmas, and at other times stood outside the church chatting while their wives worshiped, Forgione not only went ot Mass every Sunday, but with his wife, stopped at the church to pray after working in the field. He is remembered as constantly praying the rosary, yet another habit he instilled in his famous son. Not an oath or a foul word ever escaped his lips, and so great was a reverence for life did he have that even in the fields he would step out of the way of an ant rather than step on it. "Poor little creature, why should it die?" ... George H. Kubeck

MORAL QUESTIONS RELATING TO NORTH KOREA # 1

MORAL QUESTIONS RELATING TO NORTH KOREA # 1

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://W.W.W.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - MON. MAR. 19/18

Ref: Wall Street Journal Review, Letter From North Korea, Sat./Sun.Sep. 23-24, 2017 - Selected Quotes

1. A signboard in Pyongang declares "No one can stand in our Way" as a tank rolls over words representing United Nations sanctions and North Korea's international isolation, Aug. 21, 2017. "We are not interested in dialogue to undermine our newly built strategic status." Propaganda is ubiquitous, from anti-U.S. posters to patriotic hymns.

2. The Journal reporters traveled to Pyongyang for a tightly controlled reporting trip tween Sept. 14 and 19 amid rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea....North Korea launched a ballistic missile over Japan on the second day of the trip. Hours after the group departed, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to "totally destroy North Korea" if the U.S. is required to defend itself or allies, saying leader Kim Jong Un - whom he called "Rocket Man" - was on a suicide mission.

3. Most Washington policy makers view talk of coexistence with nuclear-armed Pyongyang as a nonstarter. Allowing an unpredictable leader such as Kim Jong Jun, who has threatened to attack the U.S., to have such capabilities is simply too risky.

4. Bomb imagery colors daily life. At an orphanage, children play with plastic mobile rocket launchers instead of toy trucks. Shops sell commemorative intercontinental ballistic missile stamps, while a bakery sells cakes featuring an upright rocket, ready to launch....

5. The message government officials conveyed repeatedly to the Journal reporters: North Korea won't part with its nuclear weapons under any circumstances and is resolved to suffer economic sanctions and risk war with the U.S. to keep them. ... N.K officials said their weapons, which include nuclear missiles being designed to reach the U.S., were meant for defensive purposed only.... The officials said they wanted to force the U.S. to coexit under a system of deferrence, much as did with the Soviet Union in the Cold War...

6. During the 1990s, the country fell into a famine that killed hundreds of thousands, even as the government diverted resouces to the military. Today tens of thousands of North Koreans are believed to laguish in gulags and the state allows no dissent. ...

7. Pyongyang appeared sootless. A Korean War Museum with marbled walls that supposedly takes four days to tour didn't have a single visitor one morning.... A Protestant had no North Korean families in it, just individuals, mostly elderly women.  The sermon was an anti-American diatribe...

8. It is also a city undergoing a growth spurt, thanks to an economic miniboom driven by trade with China. Kim John Un is adding futuristic looking skyscrappers, many built for scientists and university lecturers, plus cultural amenities including a water park. ...

9. Propaganda is ubiquitous, from anti-U.S. posters and slogans to the constant sound of patriotic hyms, sometimes set to rock beats. The messages exalt three generations of Kim family leaders, who have stayed in power for more than seven decades of building a police state and instilling in the populace A QUASI-RELIGION....ELITES appear to be living well. a sushi restaurant run by deceased leader Kim Jong II's former sushi chef serves $100 platters of raw fish. A supermarket in Kwangbok Street had products ranging from locally made tea to $79 imported Japanese whisky.

10. Ri Gi Song, an economist at N.K. Academy of Social Sciences said that the country could rely on oil producing North Korean allies to get around the sanctions/ "I'll let you guess which," he said. When the journal suggested a few possible countries, including Iran and Venezuela, he smiled and repeated his answer. ... George H. Kubeck

COMMENTARY:

    How do you deal with a ruthless, barbarian, mafia-type family un-civilized communist regime that threatens the very existence of our country? There are non-military measures that need  to be taken.

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 2 OF 25

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 2 OF 25

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP:W.W.W.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - FRI., MARCH 9/18

PREFACE:

    From the book, "Padre Pio: The True Story (Revised and Expanded) by C Bernard Ruffin, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1991.

PROLOGUE: THE SECOND ST. FRANCIS:

    "Today in southern Italy many shops and homes prominently display pictures of Padre Pio. One sees occasionally graffiti bearing the legend: "Viva Padre Pio." And for those who knew him in life, as for many who have come to know him only after his death, Padre Pio lieves in deed! "I was drawn to him like a magnet," an elderly lady from the Italian city of Taranto told the author in Sand Giovanni in 1978.... Many are the stories related of how Padre Pio changed people' lives....

      After Mandato left the confessional, all he could do was "cry, cry, cry." His experience had a profound and lasting impression upon him. "Many times," he has said, "we ask God to forgive us, but with the mind and not with the heart, Padre Pio made it possible for me to ask God's forgiveness of God with all my heart and soul, not just with my mind and my lips. From that moment I have really felt what I prayed. He made my religion real!"

    Monika Hellwig, professor of theology at Georgetown University, spent three years in Italy during the time of the Second Vatican Council and visited San Giovanni. She never met anyone in Italy who was skeptical of Padre Pio. Even radicals and anti-clericals regarded the venerable friar with 'reverance and respect.' Moreover,she could testify that the stigmatized Capuchin did indeed , lead people to "deep conversions." "What struck me most." she stated, "is how much Padre Pio mediated the presence of the divine to all who came to him. People came away from him invariably inspired and assured of God's presence and care for them. In him they experienced a most immediate revelation of God's love and concern for them."  ...

     Padre Pio was also a contemporary of Paul, Tillich, Karl Barth, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Albert Schweitzer, and other profound and learned theologians but Padre Pio is attested to have communicated dthe existential presence of many more people than did any of his immensely erudite contemporaries in there university chairs...

There is testimony also that Padre Pio was gifted with the "odor of sanctity," the he frequently displayed intimate knowledge of those who came to him. Without leaving his friary at San Giovanni Rotondo, Padre Pio was frequently seen and addressed in different parts of the world. While he was observed in his room by colleagues, he was simultaneously seen in such diverse places as Rome, Uruguay, Hawaiia, and Wisconsin....

    One of the friars who assisted Padre Pio in the last years of his life declared that more people were deeoky touched by Padre Pio through his Mass than through his healings, bilocations, ecstasies , and prophecies. Perhaps more important, thousands testify that through Padre Pio's ministry, they learned to walk in holiness and to resign themselves to God's will, offering their sufferings and heartache as a sacrifice to the Almighty for the conversion of souls....

    Not everyone was impressed by Padre Pio. In the 1920s he as denounced to the Vatican as a fraud by several prestigious priests and theologians, chief among whom were Padre Agostino Gemelli, a renowned physician,psychologist,and theologian, who insisted that Padre Pio's stigmata were due to hysteria, and the powerful archbishop of Manfredonia, Pasquale Gagliardi, who swore on is pectoral cross that the controversial wounds were self-inflicted, and worse, and, worse, that their bearer was demon possessed.... To many, Padre Pio remains a curious and unbelievable figure, the subject matter for supermarket tabloids rather than serious literature, his alleged appearance after death to be relegated to the class of Elvis Presley. Many people, at least in the "industrialized world," cannot relate to mysterious perfumes, miraculous healings, and traffic with angels and devils.

     Despite the reluctance of the modern materialistic sophisticate to accept Padre Pio and his ministry, one fact is incontrovertible: for thousands of people from all walks of life - physicians, scientists, intellectuals, as well as peasants and blue-collar types - Padre Pio made Christianity real. Through his ministry many were led to deep and permanent conversion experiences, and without any significant rate of recidivism. It cannot be denied that Padre Pio changed lives....

George H. Kubeck

     

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 1

THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO # 1
IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP:W.W.W.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - MONDAY. MARCH 5, 2018

PROLOGUE: THE SECOND ST. FRANCIS. 13-14

Preface:

    During all of January (due to illness), I fell in love with this book, "Padre Pio, The True Story," by C.Bernard Ruffin a Lutheran clergyman. This is a Happy Book Report about a Saint from Italy who lived in our lifetime. He died in 1968. Padre Pio is the most recent of God's messengers.How blessed we are with this most alive Christian Saint.This is the first report of many direct excerpts. Verify, check it out and believe.

P.S. There will also be "This Sad Book Report" by the author George Neumayer, "The Political Pope."

    " National Review called him "the hottest thing in mysticism in the twentieth century" and " one of the religious forces in Italy. By the time Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, whose secular name was Francesco Forgione, died in 1968, he was receiving five thousand letters a month, and thousands of visitors were converging on him from all parts of the earth making their way Italy's Gargano Mountains to the little 16th century friar of Our Lady of Grace, just outside the town of San Giovanni Rotondo, near the city of Foggia where the venerable Capuchin priest had lived for more than a half century. They were making way for days for a chance to make their confession to him, packing themselves into the friary church to "assist" in Padre Pio's Mass.

    Hundreds of books and articles were written about him in his native Italy, and scores of stories appeared in other countries as well. Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times, as well as other reputable American periodicals, from time to time featured lengthy, serious articles about the man who was widely known as the second St. Francis.

    Padre Pio's visitors were predominately Italian, but the devout, the troubled, and (to his annoyance) the merely curious poured in to see him from England, France, Ireland, Germany, Canada, America, Australia,  and from various African and Asian nations. Although the vast majority of his visitors were Roman Catholic, the "Prophet of the People" was occasionally sought out by men and women of other Christian denominations, especially during the Second World War, when British and American troops were stationed nearby. Except, perhaps, for Jehovah Witnesses, he welcomed people of all faith - even non-Christian ones. At a time when many of his faith looked down even on other Christians, Padre Pio declared, "I am for everyone!"

    Although most of the pilgrims to the "Wise Man of the Gargano" were people of humble origin, Padre Pio attracted large numbers of intellectuals and figures of international importance. During the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), so many bishops consulted him that some observers wondered aloud whether the council was being held at Rome or at San Giovani Retondo.

    At least two popes said privately that Padre Pio was a saint. On March 9, 1952, Archbishop Giovanni Battista Montini, later Pope Paul VI, told Giulio Antonacci, major general of the carabinieri (the Italian National Police), "Padre Pio is a saint." A few minutes later, Pius X11, the reigning pontiff, having overheard the remark, saw fit to concur: "We all know that Padre Pio is a saint!" Years before, Pope Benedict XV did not hesitate to characterize Padre Pio as "a man of God." It is no known whether Pope John Paul II has ever referred to him as a "saint"(indeed he could not after 1983, since Padre Pio's Cause for Canonization was pending), but he made his confession to Padre Pio in 1947 when he was a young priest; he visited San Giovanni Rotondo in 1947, when he was a cardinal; and returned in 1987 as pope.It is known that on at least one occasion the Holy Father commended a sick friend to padre's prayers - with startling results. ....

     Nearly a million people each year continue to come from all over the world to visit his tomb, view the cell where he lived and died, visit the museum display of his mementos, and see the crucifix in the choir overlooking the old church where, in 1918, he received the stigmata the visible, bleeding wounds of Christ's Passion in his hands, feet, and side - wounds which would give him the reputation of "The Living Crucifix" or "The Second Christ."G.H.K.