Padre Pio

[olympiad]

Is anyone able to point me towards some objective analysis of the life and claimed miracles of Padre Pio? By searching on the Web, I have found only one site that is neither Catholic hyperbole nor an encyclopedia entry (ie non-critical). Is there valid debunking material out there?

Thanks in advance.

[olympiad]

45 views and no answers, helpful or otherwise? Am I to understand there has been no critical analysis of Padre Pio? Perhaps I should become a Catholic.

[richardm]

I'm sure there's been plenty of analysis - in fact, I'm sure he's been discussed here before, although it's next-to-impossible to search for him because "Pio" only has three letters :mad:

Anyway - is this (http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vatican4.htm) any use to you?

Edited to add: a search here for "padre" and "stigmata" (perhaps obviously) turned up the goods from last time (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41460), such as they are. I can still recommend the "Incorrupt bodies of the saints (http://members.aol.com/ccmail/incorruptbodies.html)" pages, though :D (Although if you're at work, be warned that it's one of those irritating sites with a tootly soundtrack)

[steenkh]

Actually, I have once read a longer article on Padre Pio and his stigmata, but I cannot find it anymore. I think it was on CICAP's pages. Although google can bring up a lot about Padre Pio, and most stuff mentions that he might have been causing his wound himself with acid, I cannot locate the article that I was thinking of.

I remember that the article mentioned that Pio's wounds disappeared only when he so old and frail that he was no longer able to apply the acid himself.

[Ashles]

There is a short article about him here (about half way down the page):

Piece about Padre Pio (http://www.secularism.org.uk/newspress/news16june2t.htm)

But they don't really back up their information sources.

I think it's one of those cases that is too old too debunk because:
A) Everyone around him was a devout believer
B) We ask for more evidence these days

[olympiad]

Thanks guys. I'll have a look at those links when I have a bit more time.

Though it may be "too old" to debunk, it's certainly causing grief in my household. The problem is that I have to put up or shut up, and if the latter I have to expect more frustrating eulogies on this and other subjects. What does one do with family members who appear to swallow whole everything they are told?

[richardm]

Which particular bits are you having trouble arguing with, the stigmata or the miracles? Or something else?

Edited to add something a bit more helpful: I assume your family are Catholics; try this: Pio had his stigmata in the palms (and back) of his hand. By common archaeological consent, crucifixion would involve nails through the wrist. Curiously, the Turin Shroud indicates nail holes through the wrist. Pio and the Shroud can't both be representations of Christ's wounds.

You might also point out that we have many, many cases of people who self-mutilate to gain attention, but very, very few cases of wounds that spontaneously open. Remember also the comment about the stigmata going away when Pio became old and frail - why? Because God abandoned him, or because he was too tired to keep hurting himself?

Bear in mind that the Vatican Council itself originally decided that he was self-inflicting the wounds (and worse - that he was a fraudster who fornicated in the confessional).

On the subject of the miracles: Having a quick flick through we see bilocation (appearing in more than one place at a time) - for which the evidence is one person's word; allied pilots who were on their way to bomb the area near the monastery being turned back by the figure of a monk in the clouds (Remarkably, when the General in charge took command from the jittery pilots, no apparition appeared, and the target area was flattened).

There are two or three people who were ill, and became well again - but how many people prayed to him and then died...

Got to go - hope that's a start at least.

[Ashles]

The problem is that I have to put up or shut up, and if the latter I have to expect more frustrating eulogies on this and other subjects. What does one do with family members who appear to swallow whole everything they are told?
Try to explain to your household members that, actually, it is they that have to put up or shut up.
They are the ones making the claims for paranormal activity. They are the ones who must prove to you (or at least provide non-anecdotal evidence) that these events were supernatural.

Ask them to prove to you that you can't levitate while unobserved. If they can't prove this, then explain that is similar to what they are asking you to prove.
How can you demonstrate that he poured acid on his hands? You haven't watched or studied him. You don't even know him. And nor do they.
It is either some form of deceit or a genuine paranormal event - one of these is known to exist everywhere in the world, the other is not. Which is more likely?

[Ribbitalu]

Olympiad,

By any chance are your family members Italian? Many older Italians feel they have to believe in Padre Pio, something about being a good Catholic and it's downright "un-Italian" to not believe in the guy.


Here's a link (from the Ukraine?) that tries to shed some light on stigmata and photographs of Padre Pio: http://www.ukar.org/pope/pope01.html


Good luck.

[The Mighty Thor]

Originally posted by cancerwoman
Olympiad,

By any chance are your family members Italian? Many older Italians feel they have to believe in Padre Pio, something about being a good Catholic and it's downright "un-Italian" to not believe in the guy.


Here's a link (from the Ukraine?) that tries to shed some light on stigmata and photographs of Padre Pio: http://www.ukar.org/pope/pope01.html


Good luck.

From the link you provide comes the following sober judgment:

It is evident, then, that the Catholic priesthood is not homogeneous, but rather that good and evil priests battle for control of the Church, and that at the moment, the evil have gained ascendency and have put the Church on the side not of protecting the uneducated and the trusting, but on the side of pillaging them. Is "evil" too strong a word for these currently-ascendant priests? No one hesitates to call a pederast priest "evil," and yet pederast priests do not for their profit send vast numbers to their deaths the way that promoters of Padre Pio do.

What the Church must do is to recognize that the bulk of people who flocked to Padre Pio when he was alive, and who flock to his tomb now that he is dead, are seeking medical remediation, but which they cannot get from Padre Pio, dead or alive, although they do have some chance of getting it from medical science. If they are beyond the help of science, they should be counseled not to waste their wealth on quacks, but to donate it instead to science, so that at least the next generation might have the cure that is unavailable today. The hordes of wealth which the Church has collected from such misled people belong by right to medical science, and should rightly go toward the building of laboratories rather than toward the building of cathedrals. If all the wealth collected by the Church under its empty promise of medical amelioration over the last century had gone instead to scientific research, then cures and remedies would have been discovered that would today be able to genuinely prolong the lives and alleviate the sufferings of the seven million who visit Padre Pio's tomb annually, whereas the Church's misappropriation and squandering of that wealth instead leaves these many supplicants with no better remedy than false hope.

I do not dispute that the Church has a valuable role to play in modern life, but I do invite you to agree that that role should not be one of representing as supernatural such childish stunts as the least accomplished of magicians is able to replicate, should not be one of capitalizing on the public's ignorance of scientific method, and most emphatically should not be one of permitting priests to practice medicine without a licence.

Lubomyr Prytulak