Re-Presenting a Contemporary Saint: Padre Pio

of Pietrelcina
Michael A. Di Giovine

In the current era, the competing ways of perceiving a Catholic saint are
best illustrated by the cult of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (18871968), a
twentieth-century Capuchin monk, who has become one of the Catholic
worlds most revered saints for his Christlike suffering, supernatural visions,
and stigmata, as well the poverty-alleviation projects he carried out through
the foundation of a technologically advanced research hospital, Casa Sollievo
della Sofferenza, at his monastic home of San Giovanni Rotondo.1
Pio was born Francesco Forgione in the small southern Italian town of
Pietrelcina, where popular myth holds that he experienced diabolic at-
tacks, ecstasies, and heavenly visions as a child. In 1918, at the age of thirty,
he moved to the remote town of San Giovanni Rotondo, some 165 kilome-
ters from Pietrelcina, never to return again. During that year, he offered
himself in prayer for the end of World War I; Christ appeared to him
multiple times, wounding his side in what the Church calls transverbera-
tionthe piercing of the soul by seraphim flames, a mystical wound of
love.2 When the pain finally ceased in September, Pio prayed in thanksgiv-
ing; he was then left with the marks of the stigmata.3 Pio would continu-
ously suffer from these highly visible, bleeding wounds on his hands and
feet throughout his life.

This article is based on research undertaken in July and August of 2008 at Pietrelcina and
San Giovanni Rotondo through a Leiffer fellowship from the University of Chicago.
1. Tracy Wilkinson, Padre Pio Exhumed for a Second Life, Los Angeles Times, 25 Apr.
2008, articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/25/world/fg-padre25
2. See Augustine McGregor, Padre Pio: His Early Years (San Giovanni Rotondo, 1985), pp. 18186.
3. See ibid., p. 190.

Critical Inquiry 35 (Spring 2009)

2009 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/09/3503-0005$10.00. All rights reserved.

481
482 Michael A. Di Giovine / Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
While Pio may have viewed his stigmata as the ultimate sign of Chris-
tian obedience, an intensely corporeal return to Jesus most fundamental
teachings, many of his brothers and superiors in the Capuchin order and in
the Vatican saw instead a troublesome and subversive disobedience, espe-
cially because it was coupled with a high level of charisma that attracted
large groups of devotees. He was accused of fraudulently attempting to
gain fame for personal pleasure; some jealous colleagues even accused him
of having gummare (mistresses)a transgression of all three monastic
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He was banned from celebrating
the Eucharist until Pope Pius XI personally lifted the injunction in 1933;
this was as much an effort at co-option as it was at cultivating devotion.
Indeed, many already saw him as a living saint, and worshippers flocked to
his monastery high atop the arid cliffs of the Gargano Peninsula for the
opportunity to confess their sins to him; he was said to know their trans-
gressions even before they were uttered.
His charismaintegral to any popular saint did not wane after his death;
on the contrary, the cult became even stronger. Prayer groups, endorsed by
Pio himself in the 1950s, spread across modern Christendom, taking particular
hold in Ireland and the United States.4 As the cult became more diffuse, ac-
commodating the different worldviews of Catholics living at a significant dis-
tance from the social milieu in which Pio lived, the sensationalized aspects of
his biography became its primary unifying factor. Although the prayer groups
founded in the United States, without official Vatican sanction, were particu-
larly influential in furthering the popular cause for Pios canonization, the
Vaticans public description of Pio after his canonization in 2002 makes no
mention of his mystical attributes save for one terse sentence: He was always
immersed in supernatural realities.5 In keeping with the catechisms defini-
tion of a saint as a disciple who has lived a life of exemplary fidelity to the
Lord,6 the Vatican underscores Pios obedience instead.7

4. See, for example, Frank M. Rega, Padre Pio and America (Rockford, Ill., 2005), and Colm
Keane, Padre Pio: The Irish Connection (Edinburgh, 2007).
5. Padre Pio da Pietrelcina, www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/
ns_lit_doc_20020616_padre-pio_en.html
6. Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church (Ligouri, Mo., 1994), 2156, p. 521.
7. Padre Pio Da Pietrelcina.

M I C H A E L A . D I G I O V I N E is currently completing his Ph.D. in the

department of anthropology at the University of Chicago. His research focuses
on tourism and pilgrimage, heritage and placemaking, development and
revitalization movements, historic preservation and museums, and religion and
popular piety in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Italy.
 Critical Inquiry / Spring 2009 483
Integral to Padre Pios cult is pilgrimage, a tourist gaze directed at mon-
uments, landscapes, and relics,8 yet contextualized by a variety of competing
understandings of the saint and his sanctity. San Giovanni Rotondo has now
become the second largest pilgrimage site in Europe (after the Vatican),9 and
the second most visited Catholic sanctuary in the world (after Our Lady of
Guadalupe in Mexico City).10 It is estimated that nine million people will have
visited Pios body since the Capuchins made the highly contentious decision
to exhume and display it in 2008.11 Although his body is completely clothed
and his face covered by a lifelike silicon mask, pilgrims have commented on
the transcendent experience of seeing his uncorrupted body.
A proliferation of souvenirs circulates inside and outside these pilgrim-
age sites. Befitting a twenty-first century cult, Pios souvenirs take a decid-
edly modern form: tiny water bottles containing chemically perfumed
water from the Gargano Mountains; plastic statuettes conflating the story
of Pio with that of the crucifixion; battery-operated votive candles, mass-
produced calendars, and cigarette lighters embossed with Pios likeness.
While some devotees criticize these souvenirs for their commercialism,
some in Pietrelcina argue that the ubiquitous image of an aging, white-
bearded monk marginalizes Pietrelcina by depicting Pio only as he appeared
after he left, despite the fact that most of his supernatural visions occurred in
the town. They have responded with alternative re-presentations: books are
being written on Pios early years in Pietrelcina; the town has launched a pub-
licity campaign, Pietrelcina: City of Padre Pio, which associates the saint
with local settings; and the stained-glass windows in Pietrelcinas basilica de-
pict episodes of Pios adolescence, complete with age-specific portrayals of his
interactions with Jesus and Mary. Repeating the words of Padre Pio, the mes-
sage to devotees is clear: A Pietrelcina e` stato Gesu`, e tutto e` avvenuto la`.
Though there may be different ways of seeing Pio, they should all be informed
by the understanding that Jesus was in Pietrelcina, and everything happened
there.

8. See John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London, 1990).
9. See Padre Pio Tomb Desecrated, Italy Magazine, 22 May 2008, www.italymag.co.uk/
italy/religion/padre-pio-tomb-desecrated
10. See Richard Owen, Born Again: Its Five-Star All the Way for Todays Savvy Pilgrims,
Times of London, 26 Apr. 2008, p. 2.
11. See, for example, St. Padre Pios Body to Be Exhumed, Displayed for Veneration, Catholic
News Service website, 9 Jan. 2008, www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0800116.htm, and Padre
Pio Set to Beat Lourdes, Italy Magazine, 7 May 2008, www.italymag.co.uk/italy/puglia/padre-pio-
set-beat-lourdes
FIGURE 1. Death notices on a wall in Contrada di Madonna della Salute, a farming village.
These public notices often feature a photograph of the deceased and may also include an image
of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, or the Sacred Heart. Here, however, they include iconic
representations of Pio.
FIGURE 2. A stained glass window surrounding the central doorway of Pietrelcinas Basilica
of the Madonna della Libera. Challenging both the well-known biography and the common
iconography of Padre Pio, it depicts him as a youth receiving the stigmata in the grove of Piana
Romana outside Pietrelcina in 1911 rather than in San Giovanni Rotondo in 1918.
F I G U R E 3 . Statuettes of Padre Pio on sale in San Giovanni Rotondo. The town earns over 120 million euros
per year from souvenir sales, magazine subscriptions, and revenue from its television stations.
FIGURE 4. Images of Padre Pio interspersed with mundane objects inside a home in
Pietrelcina.
FIGURE 5. Accendini: Pio cigarette lighters in a souvenir shop, Pietrelcina.
FIGURE 6 . Billboard advertising Pietrelcina as the city of Padre Pio, photographed in the
countryside of Piana Romana.
FIGURE 7. Interior of the new pilgrimage basilica dedicated to Padre Pio. Designed by Renzo
Piano, it also contains an immense bronze sculpture by Arnoldo Pomodoro. It can hold a
standing-room crowd of ten thousand people, but it is rarely used to its full capacity.
FIGURE 8. The immense Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, towering over the town of San Giovanni Rotondo.
FIGURE 9 . Controversial ostenzione of St. Pio, who was exhumed on the fortieth anniversary of his
death and displayed through mid-2009. Nearly nine million pilgrims have gazed upon Pios uncorrupted
body, though only his fingertips peeking from behind his gloves can be seen; his body is covered by his
cassock, and his face is concealed by a superbly detailed silicon mask designed by a London mannequin
maker.