# 40 OF 45 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO

# 40 OF 45 - THIS HAPPY BOOK REPORT ON PADRE PIO 

IN PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH - BLOGGER. CINOPS BE GONE - THURS. FEB. 6, 2020

 

PADRE PIO - THE TRUE STORY BY C. BERNARD

Chapter 17 - The Miracle Worker  199-208

 

"During the 1920's, many people from different parts of Italy began to visit San Giovanni Rotondo. People began to come from other countries. Some of them were so drawn to Padre Pio that they settled in the little town. One such person was Friedrich Abresch, a native of Germany who came to see Padre Pio in 1925, at the age of twenty-eight, out of pure curiosity. A nominal Lutheran in his youth, he had become Roman Catholic on marrying an Italian but did not practice his religion. "I had no faith," he admitted. Eventually he studied theosophy and became a believer in reincarnation....

 

Padre Pio then explained that theosophy and reincarnation were "heresies." He asked Abresch to retire, get his thoughts together and try to recall when he had last made a sincere confession... Eventually the Abresch family settled in San Giovanni Rotondo, where Friedrich opened a photography studio. For many years he was something of an official photographer for Padre Pio and his brethren, and most of the extant likeness of the celebrated were taken by this man, who was led to Christ through his ministry.

 

What impressed visitors to our Lady of Grace most deeply, however, was not cures, bi-locations, or supernatural intuitions in the confessional (after all),not all who sought out the padre experienced these things); rather it was Padre Pio's Mass. This author has never interviewed anyone who attended one of Padre Pio's Masses who was not deeply impressed....

 

John Mccaffery, a Scottish businessman based in Milan, over the years made numerous trips to see Padre Pio. He attempted to describe the stupendous phenomena of the padre 's Mass in this way: "For more than an hour one is held spellbound by the deep intensity with which it is said; not a physical intensity, for his movements are slow and deliberate, his voice full and low-pitched, but an intensity of the spirit wherein we now glimpse a Padre Pio obviously inhabiting a world other than the material world around him; at times in apparent mental converse, through all and above all his evident tremendous consciousness of of the significance of his words and actions, and there  clearly revealed, the bleeding perforations in his hands. In a way, when you have seen his Mass, you have seen everything, or at least you fully understand and accept everything.

 

Andy Mandato recalls, "At the beginning of the Mass, his face was really pale, just as if he were carrying our suffering, our  pain, and our sin. After the Consecration, his face underwent an amazing change. It seemed to be transfigured with radiant light. From the very first time that I went to Padre Pio's Mass, I realized that the spirit of God was there."

During the course of the service, Mandato - and others - sometimes heard Padre Pio  speak as if he were addressing invisible beings. "Go Away! Go Away!" he was heard to say as if evil spirits were trying to interfere. Although Padre Pio's Mass lasted much longer than most other priests - often an hour and three quarters - many commented that they recollected that when it concluded it seemed as if scarcely a half hour had passed. It was at Padre Pio's Mass that hundred of people professed to feel the presence of God in a way that was uniquely real and uniquely direct.

 

George H. Kubeck