Suffering pope makes suffering monk a saint

? Pope John Paul II, who himself once turned to Padre Pio seeking a cure for an ailing friend, raised the mystic Italian monk to sainthood Sunday to the cheers of some 200,000 pilgrims sweltering in temperatures near 100 degrees.

The crowd, jamming St. Peter’s Square and nearby streets, was one of the biggest ever in this 23-year-old papacy. City authorities said some 500 pilgrims, some of whom fainted or suffered sunstroke, needed medical attention. Civil defense officials said the temperature reached 97 degrees in the square, and humidity hovered around 80 percent.

Balloons are released over a crowd of pilgrims gathered outside the San Giovanni Rotondo Basilica, near Foggia, southern Italy, where Italian mystic monk Padre Pio died in 1968. Pope John Paul II elevated Padre Pio to sainthood Sunday at the Vatican.

Pio died in 1968 after living for decades with inexplicable, bleeding wounds on hands and feet, like the wounds Jesus suffered at crucifixion. In Italy, images of the bearded Capuchin monk with his hooded robe are everywhere from taxi dashboards to refrigerator magnets to key chains.

The faithful who attended the canonization included a boy whose recovery in 2000 from a meningitis-induced coma in a hospital Pio founded in a southern Italian town was declared a miracle by the Vatican.

The boy’s mother had prayed before Pio’s tomb in the town of San Giovanni Rotondo for her son’s recovery.

To become a saint the Vatican requires certification of two miracles attributed to the figure’s intercession after death. One miracle is required for beatification, the last formal step before sainthood, and that came after doctors advising the Vatican concluded there was no scientific explanation for the 1995 recovery of an Italian woman with a chest ailment.

After beatification, a second miracle is required, and the Vatican declared that one was the recovery of the boy.

During his homily, John Paul recalled, how, in 1947, as a young priest he journeyed from Poland to be confessed by Padre Pio, who would hear confessions for hours.

“I, too, had the privilege in my younger days, of taking advantage of his availability in penance,” the pope said.

St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 1234 Ky., celebrated all of its weekend Masses in honor of Padre Pio, with passages from Scripture that reflect the qualities of his ministry.Parishioners named the chapel inside the church’s north entrance the Padre Pio Chapel of Reconciliation and Healing.

For decades, many in the Vatican were made uneasy by his huge popularity and had scorned Padre Pio, doubting his inexplicable wounds were real and that his virtues were authentic. He was banned for years from saying Mass in public, even as his following grew immensely. One high-ranking church official wondered if Pio had deliberately caused his wounds, perhaps by pouring acid on raw skin. Some detractors claimed that Padre Pio had sexual relations with female admirers.

But the process for his sainthood moved rapidly under John Paul II, who has now made 462 saints since 1978 as he tries to give his flock new role models for virtuous lives in trying times.

Some in the crowd likened the pope to Padre Pio.

“The pope is just like Padre Pio,” said Giuseppa Esposito, who traveled from Taranto, not far from San Giovanni Rotondo, for the canonization. “He suffers with God-given strength.”