Padre Pio's Canonisation was based on lies and should be revoked
Padre Pio was an Italian Franciscan who said he got the visible stigmata in 1918 after having pains in his hands and feet and side on and off since 1915. Jesus was supposedly nailed hands and feet to a cross and got stabbed in the side. A stigmatic is a person who carries similar wounds as the result of a miracle.
Pio was canonised by Pope John Paul II in June 2002. On that day he became St
Pio.
Pio was accused of insanity and using women sexually and theft by many
theological experts and doctors and even archbishops and bishops. It was only
because of the popes who decided to support Pio that these critics came to be
ignored.
Now the Church leaves it up to the local bishop to decide if a person claiming
special powers from God in his diocese is really in possession of such powers.
Yet with Pio the bishops who made serious allegations against him came to be
ignored when the Vatican wanted to change its hostile attitude towards Pio.
Pio never should have been canonised. His wounds might have been self-inflicted.
He was just the kind of man that wanted to bring people back to the days when
unconditional obedience and self-degradation under the heels of bishops and
engaging in physical torture was an essential part of being a Christian. That
the man has not caused too much evil is down to the fact that believers are weak
in faith not down to any good influence from him.
It is a fact that people who pray a lot and who seem to be very holy can still
be frauds. Consider the devotion exhibited by traditionalist Catholic sects.
They claim to recognise papal authority while taking the rights of the pope on
themselves. For example, they claim their priests can forgive sin despite the
papal decree that they have no faculty or power to do so. Pio might have prayed
a lot to ease the guilt of being a fraud.
The Church has made no declaration on the authenticity of the miracles allegedly
surrounding Pio or even his supposed stigmata excepting the two healing miracles
that were required for the canonisation. One miracle was the cure of a woman
with lung disease and the other was of a Italian boy who was in a coma with
meningitis. That medicine is full of anomalies like that. And that the despairing
predictions of doctors are sometimes disproved is conveniently forgotten.
The Church has canonised many saints who reported daily miracles which does not
amount to agreeing with the saint that the miracles were true. The Church
believes many of these saints erred in their revelations and has no problem with
admitting that some of them were mentally ill. The problem I have with this is
that you would need to authenticate every miracle reported one by one to be sure
that no fraud took place before you would have the right to canonise. Dubious
miracles are often the sign of unsaintliness.
The canonisation only means that he is a saint and that he was not wilfully
faking the miracles which is not the same as saying the miracles are approved
and that Pio might not have imagined things at times. The miracles have included
visions of Pio after his death, Pio managing to appear in visions before his
death and many others. Given that miracles are supposedly signs for God does not
make mistakes and does not do them to fix his blunders, it follows that real
miracles will be experienced by knowledgeable reliable people and it will not be
hard to authenticate them and they will be authenticated soon for the sooner the
better for things that make a difference could be forgotten over time. The
miracles of Pio were tricks because the investigation took place too long after
their alleged occurrence.
Reason says then that the Pio miracles which he never denied but encouraged by his
silence were tricks. For the Church to make a saint and then not authenticate
his miracles as it does do indicates that the canonisation is invalid and biased
even fraudulent. Canonisations are done if the candidate for sainthood has been
shown to have lived a holy life to a remarkable and unusual degree under
intensive and thorough investigation. The Church has canonised many saints and
simply dismissed many of the bad things said about them as gossip. Pio was no
exception. Why investigate a life at all to make a saint if you are going to
ignore the unsavoury elements? Until these are explained and debunked the person
cannot proclaimed a saint.
They say saints produce fruits. One of them was Pio's canonisation. It can by no
means be considered a valid or sensible canonisation. It is not a good fruit. At
best it is neither a bad fruit or a good one. It was a bad fruit. It has led the
whole Church astray and made people more unreasonable in their trust in the
Catholic Church. Jesus said you can tell fakes when they produce bad fruits.
There is no doubt that the alleged good fruits of inspiring prayer groups like
Pio has done and getting a hospital built means nothing compared to him becoming
another of many bogus Catholic saints thanks to a pope who will one day be one himself
and a siren for a barbaric system of doctrine that is provably false. Jesus knew
that false prophets like to seem holy and virtuous which was why he said first
that wolves come in the guise of lambs and that it is by their fruits that you
know the false prophets. There is no doubt that the main way to tell is if
their doctrine is pure and verifiable.
The hospital is not admissible as a good fruit because it was built with
contributions from a dubious source thanks to his notorious arch-apostle and
promoter Brunatto. If the people helped, then the people were the ones who were
good. Not Pio. Pio made no sacrifices for it. Pio knew the people were paying
because they believed in the stories about his miracles. Is it right to get
people to donate money for that reason when the miracles have not been properly
investigated by the Church? Pio did not tell them to curb their devotion and
wait for the verdict of the Church. His miracles are incompatible with the Catholic
doctrine that God will never do any miracle that undermines the authority of the
Church for the Church is the authority he has set up. The prayer groups are not
admissible as good fruit either because prayer is an activity that refuses to
give humanity their full dignity. Prayer treats the God belief as more important
than persons. We are to bow before God like a superior when in fact we are just
bowing down to a belief created by people. Also, real prayer is just submission
to the will of God. In essence it is telling him that only his will
be done and nothing else. It is just the
passive acceptance of divine will so how could praying people really intend to
help anybody by prayer? Prayer is a clear instance of faith being put before
people even though the way it is done can fool you.
Curiously the Church looks for miracles after a persons death before she will
canonise them but no matter how well attested the miracles they do when alive
are she does not care as much.
A source says:
The Church never canonizes any of her children in their lifetime, and even after death she does not accept such manifestations, however well-grounded may be the belief in their supernatural origin, as the sole and principle foundation for her favourable judgement
(page 96, The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism).
This is bizarre. You could do a thousand
miracles when alive and not get canonised and if you do one or three after you
die the Church is satisfied with these few miracles and will proceed with the
canonisation if it wishes.
Pio was only made a saint because he was popular and if the Church wants to be
popular in these days of horrendous clerical sex-scandals it has to sweeten up
the people again.