#15 of 25 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

# 15 OF 25 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONEBLOGSPOT.COM - THURS. AUG. 2/18

Padre Pio, The True Story by C. Bernard Ruffin

Chapter 5 - 'A holy priest, A perfect Victim - 71

    Pio's parents, however, were not satisfied with the diagnosis. They took him to a young doctor in Pietrelcina, Andrea Cardone. Cardone, who boasted of a doctorate in medicine (as many practitioners in southern Italy at the time could not). was a brilliant physician who even in his nineties kept abreast of the latest medical advances. Cardone took issue with the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis. Just to be sure

he convinced Gra and Beppa to send their son to specialists in Naples, who confirmed that Pio was not suffering from any form of tuberculosis....

    Cardone was convinced that Fra Pio's illness was a simple case of chronic bronchitis aggravated by his ascetic lifestyle. He recommended a period of rest and "abundant nourishment." in Pietrelcina. After a short time, Fra Pio seemed cured and able to return to Montefusco. His mysterious illness, however, was to plague Pio, off and on, for the next decade, and it nearly derailed his vocation as a religious. ...

    He complains in March 1910 of continuous fever especially at night, a cough, pains in his chest and back, and of sweating a lot. In April he was confined to bed. In May he suffered from chest pains. In April he was confined to bed. In May he suffered from chest pains. In July these pains were so bad as to render him speechless at times. "Almighty God in His mercy desires to free me from the sufferings of this my body, as I hope He does, through shortening my exile here on earth," he wrote Benedetto, "I shall die very happy ...." In another letter he confides: "The notion of being healed, after the all the tempts that the Most High has sent me, seems to me but as a dream, even madness. On the contrary, the idea of death is very attractive to me....

Yet, through it all, Fra Pio is resigned to the will of God.  "I do not know the reason for this, but in silence I adore and kiss the hand of Him who smites me, knowing truly that it is He Himself who, on the other hand, afflicts me, and, on the other hand consoles me."

The longed-for day was August 10, 1910 ... twenty-three-year-old Fra Pio boarded a horse-drawn cab and bounced over to the cathedral of the cathedral of Benevento, where he was ordained a priest by eighty-three-old Archbishop Paolo Schnosi. After a light lunch, which presumably Padre Pio was able to hold down, the little party returned to Pietrolcina, arriving 5 P.M. They met at the edge of the city by the city band, which had been hired by Giuseppa Cardone, Michele's wife.  The band accompanied Padre Pio to his home while, along the way, cheering townspeople showered him with coins and candy. There, at the house, Mammella put on a great feast. Through it all, Padre Pio sat with his head, blushing with emotion. "That beautiful day of my ordination" he would always recall as a day on which he felt as if he were in heaven....

There, in his retreat in the Piana Romano, Padre Pio reported to Padre Benedetto frequent assaults by the devil. These assaults seem, at this period to have been intellectual, taking three forms: temptations against purity, fear on unconfessed sin, and a conviction of being hopelessly wicked. During the Easter season of 1911 he writes, "Even to these holy days the enemy tries with all its might to induce me to acquieces to his wicked designs, and in particular, this malignant spirit tries with every sort of fantasy to tempt me into thought of uncleanness and despair." Far from being titillated, Padre Pio was horrified, confessing, " I tremble from head to toe with the fear of offending God."