Word: pio
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...opened for them. At this point, wrote Monsignor Carlo Liberati of the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints, "there was a moment of profound and intense commotion." The body within, that of 19th century Pope Pius IX, was "almost perfectly conserved." Pius, known universally in Rome as Pio Nono, died in 1878. Yet here he was "in the beauty of his humanity, just as he is seen in the photographic documentation" of his deathbed, back when the entire city came "and admired the beautiful face of the Pontiff smiling in the sleep of death." Although Pius' face...
...minority. The April exhumation cleared the way for Pio Nono's beatification, scheduled for this Sunday. Beatification will confirm Pius' "heroic virtue," affirm a miracle (a nun's broken kneecap healed) and encourage Catholics to venerate his remains, which will be transferred to a clear crystal casket. The next step will be canonization, or sainthood...
Although the Vatican will not admit it, Pio Nono is a last-minute substitution for a controversial successor, Pius XII. The beatification of the later Pius was to have balanced that of Pope John XXIII, the liberal hero who called the Second Vatican Council. The past 40 years, however, have seen an unabating storm of complaint that Pius XII did not do enough to oppose the Holocaust. Postponing Pius XII's "cause" and replacing it with that of Pio Nono--also a conservative favorite--must have seemed a good idea at the time...
...road to sainthood, it pays to have connections. A mystic with blood on his hands was scheduled to move a step closer to becoming a saint this week with Pope John Paul II's beatification of the Capuchin friar known as PADRE PIO. The cleric, who died in 1968, is a favorite of the Pontiff's and a cultlike figure to many other Catholics. Last year 7 million pilgrims--more than went to Lourdes--trekked to the remote hillside village of Italy's San Giovanni Rotondo, where he's buried; the village bustles with the construction of hotels...
...Padre Pio bled for 50 of his 81 years from mysterious, Christlike wounds on his hands, feet and side. Suspicious about the stigmata as well as his reputation for seeing visions and being in two places at once, the Vatican investigated the friar and curtailed his activities. But he was sought out by believers, including, in 1947, a Polish priest named Karol Wojtyla, who reportedly was told he'd someday be Pope. As Cracow's auxiliary bishop, Wojtyla asked Padre Pio to pray for a friend with cancer; she recovered, and is still alive. In 1983 the Pontiff...