Padre Pio and the sainthood racket

The Catholic Church has made it easier to manufacture saints in a timely and efficient manner. Now new-saints-in-the-making are fast tracked as a result of more efficient guidelines for assessing the saintlike attributes of proposed candidates. At one time the Church charged a so-called Devil's Advocate with digging for the dirt on prospective saints, but that office has since been abolished.

You have to wonder what type of criteria the Church uses to gauge "saintliness" when you consider that there has been a movement to push for the canonization of Girolamo Savonarola. Exactly what is saintly about about a 15th century fanatic with apocalyptic fantasies who orchestrated the burning of books and art is difficult to fathom. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, was given the papal nod despite being a well known fascist sympathizer and anti-Semite.

So it should come as no surprise that a few years ago the Church saw fit to canonize Padre Pio, a pious fraud who wore fingerless gloves to cover up what he claimed were stigmata - supernatural reproduction of the wounds of Christ. However in Pio's case the evidence suggests that the "supernatural agent" was carbolic acid - administered secretly to keep his wounds weeping.

We know about Pio's acid habit thanks to research by Italian historian, Sergio Luzzatto, who managed to unearth damning documents. A letter in Pio's hand asked a female acquaintance to obtain carbolic acid 'in strict secrecy' from a pharmacist.

The canonization of Padre Pio seems more of a concession to his cult-like appeal than to higher considerations of saintliness, because two successive popes viewed the friar as a hoaxer. In fact reports commissioned by the Church on Pio's activities claimed that he had regular sex with women, sometimes in the confessional or in his cell, and that he scourged himself with a metal tipped whip.

Sado-masochistic inclinations might explain some of this. Pio had a history of self-flagellation that went back to his youth. When he entered the monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo at age 31, there were reports that he would awaken from sleep covered in blood.

The recent exhumation of Padre Pio's corpse has become a grotesque religious carnival. Evidence of Pio's charlatan-like behavior tends to get overlooked when the Church sees a huge PR opportunity. Some 800,000 pilgrims have booked to view the saint's corpse before Christmas.

The carnival-like atmosphere isn't anything new. Since Pio's death, San Giovanni Rotondo has attracted 7 million people every year. Local trinket sellers and souvenir shops do a brisk trade selling Padre Pio statues, ashtrays, pens, keyrings, mugs, T-shirts, calendars, rosaries, cigarette lighters and anything else that can bear his image.

This type of creepy death commerce is reminiscent of the dealers in the "relics of the cross" during the medieval period - hucksters who convinced the gullible that slivers of wood were pieces of the calvary cross and that blood stained fabric was none other than the blood of Christ. The Catholic Church has accommodated popular superstitions for centuries. Since they serve to keep the faithful lining up and guarantee widespread media coverage, there is no reason to anticipate that the show will end any time soon