Truth from Der Spiegel: Back from the Grave

BACK FROM THE GRAVE
Padre Pio Exhumed for Pilgrims in Italy

The Catholic Church is rolling out one of its most popular saints -- although he died in 1968. Padre Pio's remains will be on display for the rest of the year in Italy for pilgrims to visit.

The body of Padre Pio, one of the Catholic Church's most recent and popular saints, went on display Thursday in southern Italy to mark the 40th anniversary of his death.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Vatican's sainthood office, conducted an outdoor mass for about 15,000 pilgrims in the town of San Giovanni Rotondo, where Padre Pio spent most of his life in a Capuchin monastery. Then the cardinal paid a private visit with a few other Church officials to the crypt where Pio's remains are laid out in a crystal-windowed casket.

A sort of cult has grown up around the Italian monk who was said to have stigmata, or bleeding wounds to imitate Jesus' crucifixion, on this hands and feet. Thousands of pilgrims gathered to attend a special mass and view his reconstructed corpse.

As a living cult figure, Padre Pio embarrassed the Church because of his popularity and his supposed wounds. For years he was banned from saying mass in public. But Pope John Paul II made him a saint in 2002, and Church officials say they have exhumed his body now so the faithful could pray before it, and to make sure the corpse was well preserved.

Padre Pio died in 1968, at the age of 81. Critics accused him of faking his wounds with carbolic acid, but there was no question of finding them on the corpse -- part of the myth is that they vanished after he died.