Integral Padre Pio

PADRE PIO
Ethical Development: Ethnocentric (i.e. HATED Pentecostals, saw them as “enemies of the church”)
Spiral Dynamic: Blue/Transpersonal – Absolutistic-obedience mythic order—purposeful/authoritarian
Stage of Moral Development: Level 2/Conventional
Political Ideology: Democratic (did not approve of Mussolini’s socialist, was happy when the Allies won, praised the Americans he met, voted democratic, was hated by communists)

I’ve been reading Bernard Ruffin’s Padre Pio: The True Story and (though it is almost as boring as the Bible) it has extremely interesting content (if there can be such a contradiction of qualities in a book, you’ll find it in these 319 pages).

Padre Pio was a Capuchin friar. Capuchins are Catholic fundamentalists not to be confused with monks. Capuchin are a branch of the Franciscan Order. It is a level of discipline and dedication that few of ANY faith can muster. They live with no possessions giving up EVERYTHING including will to the Catholic church. They live a life of complete abstinence, austerity and piety. They are as far beyond secular priests as priests are beyond everyday Catholics.

That being said, Padre Pio was the cream of the crop. His level of dedication afforded him a following that spanned the Western world. Bernard’s book talks about many of the miracles that 1st, 2nd and 3rd hand witness’ claimed he did. I don’t have any doubt that Pio was a conduit for some incredible force of nature (divinity?), but he was also surrounded by fanatics and superstitious country folks whose minds were still in medieval Europe even though it was the late 1800’s – mid 1950’s. One example of this archaic mind set is that the people of his local township, San Giovanni Rotondo (southern Italy) threatened to beat or even kill anyone who would dare take their blessed saint. Their passionate wrath is both amazing and sad, but I guess such possessive attitudes over local saints was common in that part of the world in that era. At one point the Mayor himself Mocaldi told the officials of the Holy Office that if they took Padre Pio away he would shed his title and join the mob himself. A local brick layer even pulled a gun on Pio and told him he was staying “dead or alive”!

Padre Pio, though cut from the same cloth as his beloved townsmen, was frustrated with their behavior. He was down right mean to those that gave him the glory instead of God. The most impressive thing to me about Padre Pio was not his miracles (these were amazing feats, no doubt) but his humility, compassion and dedication that for me made him a true saint. These (his level of submission to God) seemed to be the conditions that allowed him to be a vessel for such miracles. Ultimately, it is his love that converted so many.

His miracles included:
bi location, stigmata, healing, predictions, telepathy, the ability to know languages he’d seemingly never studied and virtually all the miracles that were performed by the Apostles in Acts.

Bernard’s book is worth reading if only to see the wealth of anecdotal evidence of Padre Pio’s works. If you are researching Pio’s life, look no further than Padre Pio: The True Story.