woman who was faced with a major gynaecological operation, the haemorrhages stopped spontaneously, and Pater Pio prophesied that she would give birth to a son. A
year later she brought the boy to him in the monastery.
Alberto de Fante, the official chronicler of San Giovanni Rotondo, relates that a man prayed for help at Pio's confessional box for his nephew who was at death's door and had been given up by the doctors.
Twenty-four hours later the nephew was well again; an 'undeniable' cure had taken place.
A woman wanted to speed up the appointment given her by the booking-office for three days hence - Pio was always booked up for weeks ahead - but when she was pushing her way through the crowd and weeping bitterly, Pater Pio stopped her and told her to go home quickly, for everything would be all right. When the woman got home, her husband, for whom she had been going to intercede, was cured.
The number of 'miraculous' reports is large. Once a man left the monastery in the evening after confession and was faced with a cloudburst. He waited, because he did not want to get soaked. Then Pater Pio approached him and told him not to worry, for he would accompany him. When the stranger reached his inn, people wondered why he had not got drenched through. The innkeeper understood at once: 'Of course, if Pater Pio was with you ...' But Pater Pio was also able to do magic the opposite way round. One winter morning a female penitent arrived at the monastery in a downpour of rain. Pio touched her on the shoulder and to her astonishment the signora's clothes 'were bone dry in a moment'.
Bilocation * was obviously also within Pater Pio's powers. The authoress of the approved account says that the father could 'pass through closed doors' to the great astonishment of the crowd who were waiting for him. In the process he was able 'to mislead insistent inquirers and put off the curious.
'Where were you, father? We were looking for you everywhere!' Pater Pio chuckled: 'I was walking to and fro in front of you, but you didn't take any notice.''
The suffering father ('I suffer when I do not suffer' - Pio on Pio), even conjured up sweet smells in frowsty rooms. Dr. Romanelli thought it unseemly of Pater Pio to use scent, as he imagined he did. A
Capuchin explained to him that Pio's blood was impregnated with the 'sweet scent'. When a Dr. Festa took a piece of linen soaked in Pater Pio's blood to Rome to have it examined in a laboratory, his fellow travellers asked him what it was that smelt so nice. In July 1930 a living-room in Bologna suddenly smelt of roses and narcissi. A sick girl had just returned from San Giovanni Rotondo.
----
[*] Being bodily present at two different places simultaneously.
---- The heavenly aroma lasted for a quarter of an hour and then the sick girl was able to move her paralysed arm again. There can be no doubt about the phenomena of smell, because the number of witnesses has been very large over four decades. In the words of Michael Faraday (1791-1867), there is obviously 'nothing too miraculous to be true'.
Pope Benedict XV anticipated all requests for canonization by saying: 'Pater Pio is truly a man of God.'
Pater Pio bore the stigmata of Christ before the eyes of contemporaries. His famous predecessor, Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), was the first person to be afflicted with officially attested stigmata. And he was canonized two years after his death. His stigmata are legendary; the saint who talked to the birds has long been singing in the choir of angels. Since St. Francis was marked by the stigmata, about
350 people are supposed to have been similarly afflicted. Not all stigmatics bear genuine signs. For example, Therese Neumann (1898-1962) from Konnersreuth in Oberpfalz, Germany, who hit the headlines.is reputed to have been a fake. The theologian Dr. Joseph Hanauer [14] suspects that Therese scratched the wounds on her own body, because she often sent visitors out of her room and then showed them the bleeding wounds when they returned. Unofficially it is said that Therese received the stigmata during Lent 1926, and had visions of the Passion of Our Lord on every Friday except for Christian holidays.
Reports however of devout people who have borne the marks of the crucifixion on hands, feet and below the heart are announced too often and by too many witnesses to be dismissed as nonsense.
The 'marks of the Lord Jesus' (Galatians 6:17) are reputed to hurt like the wounds of the crowning with thorns and nailing to the cross; they bleed on Fridays for reference and are incurable by normal treatment.
Are we faced with confirmation of an unassailable miracle? I must admit in advance that no proven explanation of the stigmatic phenomena exists as yet, that is why they are still surrounded by a thick, well- protected occult veil.
The reader should know that in the past cult and religious happenings provably arose around people ostensibly possessed by demons. Epilepsy (sudden insensibility accompanied by convulsive seizures)
was called morbus sanctor, the 'holy disease', because those affected by it often had visions of Lucifer, spirits, gods and angels. 'It is well known that Mohammed, too, suffered from epileptic attacks and was considered divine by his people for this reason. He himself recounts his stay in Paradise in the Koran.'[15] Professor O. Prokop says that experiences in epileptic states are mostly of a religious nature and that people subject to them tend to asceticism. (A characteristic of stigmatics!) They are able to induce the demonic attacks by breathing techniques - 'by shifting the balance of the acid bases'.
Catalonia, a form of schizophrenia characterized by restlessness and excitement with periodic states of stupor, develops special powers in religiously fixated persons. 'The fascination is all the more effective
... as the schizophrenic works on his environment without loss of intelligence.'
Professor Prokop and others also mention hysteria as a genuine ailment of a psychic nature. They attribute to hysterics 'a marked desire to be honoured, loved, praised and recognized, and also their joy in the ability to attract people to them by their own charms ... and in this way explain why the religious martyrs not only bore their martyrdom but also went to meet it gladly'. In addition there is the frequently proved fact that hysterics are virtually insensible to pain.
In my opinion the brief description of the clinical pictures gives essential hints about the predisposed state of people who are sought out by stigmata. All three symptoms of illness point to damage or disturbance of the nervous system. Simple reference books describe a 'stigmatic' as a man with a hypersensitive nervous system who tends to react to psychic and other stimuli with disorders
(stigmata.) The parasympatheticus, a part of the vegetative nervous system, acting on stimuli or orders from the brain, makes the eyelids close, tears flow and spittle run, but it also controls the sexual organs, etc.
In a state of heightened tension (vagotonia) the organs looked after by the para-sympathetic nervous system require very small stimuli; organic disorders can arise. Abnormal states of tension (dystonia) of muscles and vessels are typical of weakened vegetative nervous systems; they are expressed by organic troubles ... and in the skin by excess or congestion of the blood (hyperaemia). To round off the brief medical discussion, I should mention hyperaesthesia with its morbidly increased sensitivity to touch as a result of the most varied diseases of the nervous system.
To sum up. In all the cases of stigmatics known to me spontaneous excitability was as marked as the development of special powers. There can be no doubt that without exception they exercised a - deliberate or involuntary - fascination on their fellow humans. Did they not also feel a humble joy in
'being honoured, loved, praised and recognized'? Could they deny their ability to draw men to them by their own 'attractions' (= stigmata)? How could they bear pain except as a result of a specific medical condition? Were not their bodily functions also subject to the orders and stimuli of the nervous system?
The sum total of these clinical pictures, in my opinion, put stigmatics in a stress situation which influences their whole bodies. Professor Dr. Hans Selye, Director of the Institute for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in the University of Montreal, the 'father of stress research' describes such states: 'Stress is always expressed by a syndrome, i.e. a sum total of alteration, not by a single alteration. An isolated effect on a single part of the body either causes damage or stimulates higher achievement.' [16] In the present-day state of knowledge it need only be mentioned in passing that every conceivable ramification is bound to the end effect by autosuggestion.
On 14th October, 1973, I talked to Professor Josef Brudny, rehabilitation expert at New York University, in the Plaza Hotel in New York.
'You cured a young man who had been tied to a wheelchair for years with a broken spine, without an operation. Are you a miracle doctor?'
'There was no question of a miracle. If one can speak of miracles in this connection, it is the power of mind
