It's saturday! Time for my #ItalianThread. Today I want to make a lighthearted thread about a....... controversial figure of Italian catholic tradition.
My Italian moots are gonna cringe so hard, but here it is, a thread on...

PADRE PIO

Saint or scammer?

1/?

Padre Pio was a Capuchin friar born in Pietrelcina in 1887. After his death in 1968, he was made a Saint by the Catholic church. So far so good, right? Except Padre Pio was perhaps the only saint who was worshipped when he was alive as well 2/?

He had built himself a name as a miracle worker, soon becoming as famous as a rockstar in Italy - and even becoming a major shareholder of the biggest hospital in Southern Italy. He was basically Italian Rasputin, minus the orgies. 3/?

His figure was extremely controversial both because the Vatican deemed him an impostor, both because he clashed with the Italian state and was often accused of having dealt with shady businessmen and having committed tax fraud. 4/?

To his countless fans, though - yes, a priest had fans, that's Italy for you - he was unjustly accused! At the end, it's likely the pressure from the public opinion pushed an old John Paul II to canonize Padre Pio in 2002. 5/?

In particular, Padre Pio is remembered both amidst the skeptics and the devouts for his stigmata. Stigmata, in Roman Catholic tradition, are a proof of one's holyness as they occur by miracle and are a twin to Christ's own wounds 6/?

Padre Pio proudly sported stigmata on his palms. Which to his fans were a clear symbol of his closeness to g-d, but... let's say many people doubted it. They were, to many's opinion, just another of the priest's scams. 7/?

In fact, Padre Pio was known to order a lot of carbolic acid (tho he wanted to keep it a secret) and the physician who inspected the stigmata was pretty adamant in considering them just superficial abrasions, likely caused by the acid. 8/?

So, yepp, PP was pretty committed to his miracle worker persona, to the point of giving himself stigmata with carbolic acid! This, however, did nothing to decrease his popularity. No other saint or clergyman, not even the pope, was ever so popular in Italy! 9/?

I mean, the man legit had - and still has! - MERCHANDISE.
T-shirts, jewels, calendars, candles... you name it, Italy is FULL of this shit. There are even /statues/ of the man around! 10/?

They even made a movie about him, called 'Thanks Padre Pio' in which a neapolitan neomelodic singer (it's a whole thing, gonna make a thread about it) saves his song from the camorra thanks to the holy intervention of PP. It's kind of a trash cult classic in Italy 11/?

(Lucky for you, the whole movie is available on youtube. Unfortunately with no subtitles for my international moots 11bis/?)

Despite his controversial figure, Padre Pio became integral part of XXth century Italian culture. People make pilgrimages to the place where he died, the town of San Giovanni Rotondo in Apulia. I mean, guys, there's a whole website called http://www.padrepiotravel.com . 12/?

The cult of Padre Pio, who - despite the final canonization - was never completely on the good side of the vatican (John XXIII called him 'an idol made of tow' lol), is to my knowledge an all Italian phenomenon. No other Catholic tradition worships him this way. 13/?

Either you consider him a saint or a scammer, either you cringe at his name or send him a prayer... well, one has to admit, Padre Pio is an extremely Italian phenomenon in every meaning possible. 14/?

I hope you found this little thread amusing! If you'd like more threads on Italian history and culture, have a look at this page! 15/15 http://linktr.ee/FTacchi