# 69 OF 70 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO!

 # 69 OF 70 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - HTTP://WWW.CINOPSBEGONE.BLOGSPOT.COM - TUES. OCT. 27, 2020

 

PADRE PIO: - THE TRUE STORY - C. BERNARD RUFFIN

Chapter 35 - St. Pio of Pietrelcina p. 393 - 

A SAINT HAILED IN OUR TIME - NOV. 3, 2020

   

    "Kenneth L. Woodward wrote in Making Saints (1990) that the Capuchin Order began informally to gather information in behalf of Pio almost as soon as he died, but then "something mysterious happened: someone in Rome, surely with the authority of Pope Paul VI, decreed that the local process on Padre Pio could not be opened."

 

    Whatever the cause for the delay, it ended in 1983. Some have speculated that Pope John Paul II, because of his personal devotion to Padre Pio, broke the impasse. What is certain is that the diocesan process for the cause of Padre Pio's canonization - supported by "postulatory letters" by eight cardinals, twenty-one archbishops, and seventy-two bishops - opened at San Giovanni Rotondo with a service attended by twenty thousand worshipers on March 20 of that year...

 

    The ecclesiastical tribunal interviewed 73 persons... in no less than one hundred eighty-two sessions. The historical commission amassed ten thousand pages - twenty volumes - of writings by and about Padre Pio, divided into twenty volumes.

 

    On January 21, 1990, thousands jammed into the friary church, at San Giovanni Rotondo to celebrate of the diocesan process... It took 7 years for the Congregation of the Causes of Saints to study the massive documentation. Then, on June 13,1997, the theologians of the congregation voted that Padre Pio had in fact practiced the theological and cardinal virtues to a heroic degree... A year later, on December 18, Pope John Paul II declared:

 

"I verify that the Servant of God Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, in the world Francesco Forgione, a professed priest of the Order of the Capuchin Friars, practiced to a heroic degree the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, toward God and his neighbor; as well as the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance and those virtues related, to the ends and effects that they regard."...

 

    And so, on December 21, 1998, three days after declaring that Padre Pio practiced the theological and cardinal virtues to a heroic degree, Pope John Paul declared,"I verify a miracle worked by God though the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God Padre Pio of Pietrelcina ... namely the cure of Mrs. Onsiglia DeMartino, to be very rapid, complete, and lasting from the effusion of a liquid in the upper-clavicular region ... from a rupture of the thoracic duct."

 

    On May 2, 1999, the day of Padre Pio's beautification, more than 1,000 tour buses began to unload pilgrims at the crack of day near the Vatican. A massive crowd of more than 200,000 crowded St. Peter's Square for the three hour service, while another hundred thousand watched the proceedings on a giant television screen outside the Basilica of St. John Lateran in another part of Rome...from now on be called Blessed...

 

    After Mass, the pope gave a sermon... "Those who went to San Giovanni Rotondo to attend his Mass, to seek his counsel, or confess to him saw in him a living image of Christ suffering and risen. The face of Padre Pio reflected the light of the Resurrection. His body, marked by the 'stigmata,' showed forth the intimate bond between death and resurrection which characterizes the Paschal mystery... One additional miracle - occurring after the beatification - was necessary to clear the way to the ranks of the canonized saints for Padre Pio.

 

    On Dec. 20, 2001, Pope John Paul II announced the cure that qualified Padre Pio for sainthood: that of eight-year-old Matteo Pio Colello whose recover from meningitis, after state-of-the-art medical treatment proved unsuccessful was ruled