Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age

by Sergio Luzzatto, Frederika Randall (Translator)

The first historical appraisal of the astonishing life and times of a controversial twentieth-century saint

Padre Pio is one of the world's most beloved holy figures, more popular in Italy than the Virgin Mary and even Jesus. His tomb is the most visited Catholic shrine anywhere, drawing more devotees than Lourdes. His miraculous feats included the ability to fly and to be present in two places at once; an apparition of Padre Pio in midair prevented Allied warplanes from dropping bombs on his hometown. Most notable of all were his stigmata, which provoke heated controversy to this day. Were they truly God-given? A psychosomatic response to extreme devotion? Or, perhaps, the self-inflicted wounds of a charlatan?

Now acclaimed historian Sergio Luzzatto offers a pioneering investigation of this remarkable man and his followers. Neither a worshipful hagiography nor a sensationalist exposé, Padre Pio is a nuanced examination of the persistence of mysticism in contemporary society and a striking analysis of the links between Catholicism and twentieth-century politics. Granted unprecedented access to the Vatican archives, Luzzatto has also unearthed a letter from Padre Pio himself in which the monk asks for a secret delivery of carbolic acid—a discovery which helps explain why two successive popes regarded Padre Pio as a fraud, until pressure from Pio-worshipping pilgrims forced the Vatican to change its views.

A profoundly original tale of wounds and wonder, salvation and swindle, Padre Pio explores what it really means to be a saint in our time.

Genres: Religion, History, Nonfiction, Biography, Italy

385 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Sergio Luzzatto is the author of Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age, which won the prestigious Cundill Prize in History, and of The Body of Il Duce: Mussolini's Corpse and the Fortunes of Italy. A professor of history at the University of Turin, Luzzatto is a regular contributor to Il Sole 24 Ore.

Reviews

[icaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'Italia dei faccendieri e delle mene curiali non conosce crisi stagionali. Luzzatto è molto bravo nel portarne alla luce le trame , nel sottolinearne gli intrecci , le convenienze e le improntitudini lungo il corso di un intero secolo (quasi tutto il Novecento). A tal punto che, in un certo modo, padre pio diventa più una comparsa che un protagonista.

Dato l'autore e la sua professione è implicito che non si tratti di un'opera agiografica ma, nonostante le alte proteste di certi ambienti bigotti, non è nemmeno un'opera denigratoria dell'azione del frate di Montalcino ( a ciascun lettore le sue conclusioni in merito)
E' un vero buon libro di storia (avercene) basato su una ricerca documentaria attenta e relativamente nuova e scritto in modo superlativo.

[Richard Demma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating anthropological study of the development of the cult surrounding Padre Pio, with most of the focus not on the holy friar himself but on the many cultural currents swirling around him, including and especially the rise of Fascism in pre WWII Italy. At one point two ''miraculous' bodies" dominated Italy's cultural scene: Il Duce's and 'the Saint's'. This study is not for the faint of heart or the overly pious, since it includes the suggestion of many scandals involving the cult and even (possibly) some deviltry on the part of Padre Pio himself. (I've been a devotee of Padre Pio for over 50 years and this book did little to change my attitude to the man himself) At first reading, it seemed to me that Luzzatto was fairly balanced and professional and true to his word that his intent was not to pass judgement on the authenticity of the wounds of this famous 20th century Catholic stigmatist, but simply to take a more critical and objective look at the cult surrounding him, without rose colored glasses. And at first reading, I found the book to be a blast of very fresh air, with many invaluable pieces of information not found in the hagiographical studies. However, one of his fiercest Italian critics, Andrea Tornielli,had this to say about his methodology:


(Taken from Zenit: The World Seen From Rome - The Polemics of Padre Pio)

"Luzzatto raised suspicions without getting to the bottom of any of them. He cast the stone and then hid his hand. He read only parts of documents; he made huge mistakes and errors. He cited documents in which it is inferred that Padre Pio asked a pharmacist for carbolic acid and veratrine but he did not explain that on the basis of other documents, it is quite clear what Padre Pio used these things for."

Just for the record, Ms. Tornielli is a little too traditional for my taste - or perspective. I would have more faith in her judgements if she wasn't referenced so often in neo fascist, Catholic websites like Tradition, Family, Property.

Since I don't wish to make this review too lengthy, suffice it to say this wasn't my take on Luzzatto, casting stones and hiding his hand (he does recount Padre Pio's own explanations for the use of the carbolic acid), but then I'm not a professional scholar and don't have access to the documentation. However, towards the very end of the book, the author devotes some pages to the most salacious accusations of all - the alleged evidence of secret microphones planted in various places, which 'seemed' to suggest some impropriety on Pio's part with his female followers. The content of these tapes apparently shocked Pope John XXIII (who didn't actually listen to them) and resulted in the final Vatican investigation, headed by Monsignor Carlo Maccari, who would later suggest that Pio may have been enjoying carnal relations with some of his female devotees as much as twice a week. Now the Maccari affair (grotesque and repellent, in my opinion- letting my own biases show) is something I know a little about, having researched it some years ago. And here is where I can certainly fault Luzzatto and my suspicious began to tilt in Tornelli's direction. Luzzatto does not clarify that the microphones were not planted in Padre Pio's bedroom or the women's confessional, but only in the men's confessional and various visitors rooms where Padre Pio would converse with pilgrims. So in other words, we are not dealing with tapes that actually record intimate private moments between Padre Poi and women but only public conversations and bits of gossip from visitors in the rooms awaiting his arrival. Now that is a vital omission in a historical work purporting to be objective. It is the one detail that changes everything. Instead, Luzzatto drops the general insinuation of 'secret tapes' and leaves it hanging, dripping with innuendo. Furthermore, 'news' (from official Capuchin sources) stated that Msgr Maccari had recanted his accusations on his deathbed and asked for Padre Pio's forgiveness and blessing. And that would be a major story, in itself a deathbed recantation from Padre Pio's most recent official examiner. Is this an apocryphal story or can it be objectively verified? At the very least, if Luzzatto was as 'objective' as he claimed to be, then this incident should have been reported and explored - at least as to its plausibility. But not a word from Luzzatto (unless I missed it in the footnotes). Unfortunately, these key omissions cast doubts on the reliability of the rest of the book, much of which does seem to me to be of great value. This leads me to believe that Tornelli may be right as to Luzzatto's ultimate intentions. So while the book did little to affect my own estimation of the great sanctity of Padre Pio, it did help me to understand the complexities of the human context within which he lived and worked - and it left me with some serious doubts as to Luzzatto's ultimate fairness and objectivity as a scholar.

Unfortunately, Tornelli's main book in rebuttal to Luzzatto's "accusations", Padre Pio l’ultimo sospetto (Padre Pio: The Last Suspect), has not yet been translated into English, which would be a necessary read in reaching a balanced view of Luzzatto's book.

Final judgement: Really enjoyed Luzzatto's historical/anthropological study, fascinating material, a good deal of which I think is indisputable. But a significant amount of it is open to question and doubt, as well as Luzzatto's own motives. So I'm agnostic on that for the moment.

In any case, this is not the first book to recommend to any who are interested in the life of this remarkable Catholic saint. Bernard Ruffin's hagiographical work:Padre Pio: The True Story] would be a more suitable choice, though it does gloss over many of the pertinent topics of Luzzatto's more historical/anthropological study.

[marco renzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

[L'uomo che si appioppò - più o meno - la Santità]

Libro assolutamente da leggere se si è interessati alla Storia italiana del Novecento e se incuriositi dalla figura di Padre Pio, che nel bene e nel male è stato uno dei personaggi-chiave del secolo passato.

Non è infatti un saggio che tratta solo il frate con le stigmate: Luzzatto, grande storico ma anche eccezionale scrittore, racconta le vicende dell'Italia del tempo attraverso l'ambigua figura del cappuccino di Pietrelcina, di come questo sia stato inviso al Vaticano e in seguito nobilitato, a seconda dei pontefici di turno: i sospetti e le paure di Pio XI, la totale accondiscendenza di Pio XII e poi la presa di distanza da parte di Papa Giovanni XXIII, che ci aveva visto lungo qualche decennio prima di diventare vescovo di Roma; infine, la beatificazione portata a termine da Giovanni Paolo II.

C'è poi la vicinanza del culto garganico e dei suoi devoti al regime fascista (si parla di clerico-fascismo), il rapporto del frate con le cosiddette pie donne, la figura calcolatrice e truffaldina di Emanuele Brunatto, uomo dai mille volti e dai molteplici mestieri, probabilmente il vero artefice della santità di Francesco Forgione in arte Padre Pio, nonché principale responsabile di quel giro d'affari milionario che è tutt'oggi sotto gli occhi di tutti, meta di centinaia di migliaia di pellegrini.
E non mancano, com'è ovvio, i miracoli, le mani sanguinanti, l'altro Cristo.

L'autore, da vero storico, non dà giudizi, non si sbilancia mai, non cede allo spicciolo razionalismo al quale un'opera simile si sarebbe facilmente prestata, ma si limita ad esporre i fatti per mezzo di una bibliografia sterminata che rimanda a decine di altri volumi, ricca di fonti, lettere, documenti.

Un testo davvero prezioso, direi quasi imprescindibile.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this book in my local library, and checked it out to learn more about the Capuchin friar; I grew up in a family with roots in southern Italy, and particularly in Apulia, so throughout my childhood I heard stories about Padre Pio and his miracles. Unfortunately, I learned very little about Padre Pio and quite a bit about socio-historical analyses of the motivations and machinations behind the growth of the cult of Padre Pio. The man himself never quite comes into focus, although Italy in the 1920s certainly did. The subtitle should be the title of the book based on its subject matter.

[The Frahorus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ottima analisi storico-politica del "fenomeno Padre Pio", consigliatissimo.

[Katie Brennan · Rating 3 out of 5]

what it lacked in readability at times it made up for in fascinating subject matter. rather than attempt to prove or disprove the stigmata and miracles of padre pio, the book looks at what the cult of pio says about italian society during and after the world wars, and the extent to which popular religiosity was connected to the cult of il duce. really fascinating!

[Bob Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was Padre Pio a saint or a conman? Did he miraculously receive the gift of Stigmata or did he use chemicals to induce the wounds on his hand? Was he carrying on affairs with his female parishioners or was he unfairly accused of doing so?

There are few religious personas who are as famous as Padre Pio, and yet very little can be known with certainty about his life and actions. Sergio Luzzatto tries to peel back the mystery in Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age but seems to come to no conclusions.

Padre Pio was a priest in the Italian province of Pietrelcina who received the stigmata in 1918. His passionate presence and embrace of mysticism made him a character of renown in the region. As people heard about the stigmata and the other miracles attached to him, his popularity rose and people began to make pilgrimages to visit him. There were reports of miracles throughout his ministry. Some reported that he could fly, others reported that he could appear in two locations at one time and one reported that he appeared to a Luftwaffe Pilot before he bombed his hometown and convinced him to turn around. Most famous of all, however is the stigmata.

Luzzatto seeks to take a middle ground between hagiography and skepticism. He is open minded to the idea of miracles but wants to take a serious approach to the claims. As such, he presents both sides of the story and allowed the reader to make their own decision as to what happened to Padre Pio. He presents medical opinions that can find no causal evidence for the stigmata but then also copies a note where Pio asks for large does of the chemicals that can be used to create the image of stigmata.

Luzzatto is also trying to recreate the political atmosphere to explain Pio's rise to popularity. This is perhaps the weakest part of the book, and why I score it with three stars. His writing borders on confusion and he often changes topics mid-paragraph. This is complicated enough, but without understanding early 20th Century Italian politics it is almost impossible to follow the thread. (Another minor point is that he reprints pictures but has no description of them.)

Overall however, the reader gets an insightful and balanced look at St. Padre Pio. I suspect that those who believe in his miracles will continue to do so and find evidence in this book to support them. I also suspect that those who do not believe will find enough evidence in this book to support their viewpoint as well.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in an unusual chapter of religious history in the 20th century and those who are interested in the Church.

Grade: B

[Danilo Sias · Rating 4 out of 5]

È un saggio da divorare. L’autore mette in pratica la regola dell’orco di Bloch per studiare il santo taumaturgo, amatissimo simbolo dell’Italia unita. Una storia di misteri soprannaturali (su cui lo storico non interviene) e di dati da interpretare. Clericofascismo, lobby vaticane, italiane, americane, l’alternarsi di papi favorevoli o meno: tutto viene ricostruito e legato ai fenomeni di costume dell’Italia fascista, primorepubblicana e attuale. Su qualcosa si può anche dire che forse lo storico ecceda ma rimane il merito di aver per primo intrapreso la fatica.

[isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

haha i love this book because i remember having to read this and about a hundred or so pages of additional supplemental text each night for this thing called... mystics and politics in modern catholic europe. so obviously knowing me, refusing to start my homework until way past midnight but in a frenzy to get it done, i would sit in the kitchen until four am reading this mindlessly and feeling boiled alive (this was in providence). mind you at the beginning of this i didn't even know who saint anne was. but this was really easy and funny to read. can we just talk about the prologue? page 11?

[Lupo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro da far leggere nelle scuole, per spiegare cos'è stata gran parte dell'Italia del XX secolo e cosa ancorà è, purtroppo, sempre in buona parte: quella dei milioni di pellegrini che parteciperanno alla macabra processione davanti al cadavere di Padre Pio. Una descrizione precisa, come scrive l'autore, della formazione del clerico-fascismo in Italia.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro utile per collocare entro la giusta cornice una storia che pensavo di conoscere già.

[Alessandro Nicolai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molto interessante nella storia del contorno al mito creato da Padre Pio, che aiuta a capire come si è costruito

[Mary Maxwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Politics and religion….tough to read

[Tacodisc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sergio Luzzato’s portrait of Francesco Forgione, better known as Padre Pio, recently came to my attention while researching Luzzato’s broader perspective on the interwar period. He holds the chair of Modern Italian History at UConn, and his work on the intersection of secularism and religious mysticism, now almost 20 years old, is a masterpiece of interdisciplinary analysis, incorporating research on intra-faith power squabbles, political violence, national memory and myth, and a host of topics that would be a welcome addition in the library of any student of fascism’s rise. While he doesn’t appear in the index or rich footnotes from what I can tell, George Mosse and his cultural lens on fascism’s appeal never seems far from Luzzato’s approach.

The book provoked a fair amount of controversy amongst the devout, less perhaps for anything particularly damning or critical in Luzzato’s story than the fact that it doesn’t unambiguously tip readers to his own intellectual loyalty to a scientific or religious worldview. Luzzato isn’t as interested in taking sides per se as understanding Forgione’s cultish following objectively, above the fray of the emotional intensity bound to arise from any work on religious history. As the Catholic News Agency reported in regards to one journalist’s defense of the work:

“Messori noted that Luzzatto’s book fills a void in the information about Padre Pio, who Luzzatto called “the most important Italian of the last century.”  He said it strikes a balance between the excessively pious accounts of the saint’s life on the one hand, and the anti-clerical books that one can find in bookstores.  Luzzatto distances himself from these books, noting that disproportionate criticism of Padre Pio should be avoided.”

The superlative may seem like a stretch, but seen from the specific temporal and geographical limits of Padre Pio, Luzzato provides a compelling portrait of the Capuchin’s massively outsized influence in the larger Catholic world, which counts about an eighth of the global population among its flock. Readers that grew up in the church will be less shocked by the claim of the friar’s singular importance: photographs of his stigmata, printed en masse on prayer cards, may be second only to the crucifixion itself in the imagistic universe of Catholicism.

Making a claim on his familiarity and meaning to the faithful wouldn't amount to much by way of Forgione’s historic importance, however, and Luzzato goes well beyond the Gramscian endeavor to portray mystical Catholicism’s ideological capture. Where the book particularly excels is its linkage to the search for meaning after the slaughter of WW1 had concluded. (Gramsci’s notebooks are riddled with commentary on Father Gemelli, one of Forgione’s intra-faith enemies and a major intellectual figure in his own right during the period in question -- a post for another time.) I'm not sure there’s a better book for understanding the clerical component of fascism’s hold on the Italian population as it struggled to make sense of what many perceived, poisonously ideological or not, as a “mutilated victory,” a phrase that itself conjures up so much of the corporeal experience of demobilization. A skeptic myself of “histories of the body,” Luzzato’s story of the vitamorta -- death in life -- that many identified in Forgione’s “passion” has retuned my thinking to the deeper resonances of cultural experience that should be part of fascism studies, particularly at its advent.

[Ilaria]

In questo libro padre Pio compare relativamente poco. Si tratta invece di un bell'affresco dell'Italia anni Venti-Cinquanta, attraverso una serie di figure e figuri più o meno loschi che orbitavano attorno al futuro santo: affaristi, intrallazzatori, gerarchi, poeti, beghine, vescovi e spie. E' la storia del "fenomeno padre Pio" quale movimento religioso di massa, forse il primo nell'era dei mass media, indagato con il piglio dell'antropologo culturale.

Un ritratto spietato del clerico-fascismo che segnò la consacrazione "politica" di padre Pio ben prima dell'ascesa agli altari. Un testo di grande rigore storiografico, che attinge a fonti inedite e preziose; ai cattolici non piacerà, ma pazienza.

Luzzatto naturalmente non prende posizione sull'eziologia delle "stimmate", ma illustra bene in che modo era possibile ottenerle con agenti corrosivi, tintura di iodio eccetera. D'altronde, le prime persecuzioni della Chiesa contro padre Pio insinuavano appunto questo genere di inganno. Solo gli stupidi non cambiano mai idea, giusto?

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si on peut se fier a l'auteur Sergio Luzzatto, le brave Padre Pio a participé dans plus de larcins qu'Arsene Lupin avec autant de brio et de succes. Padre Pio a été donc un bandit et un charmeur. C'est fort possible qu'il a été bel et bien un homme de Dieu. Pendant sa longue carriere beaucoup d'argent a passé entre ses mains mais rien n'est resté dans ses poches. Il a vecu dans un pauvreté exemplaire pendant toute sa vie.

Luzzatto constate qu'il y a eu des grandes fluctuations dans la cotte de popularité de Padre Pio aupres du public et des dirigeants de l'eglise. Jean XXIII le prenait pour un escroc de la pire espece mais Jean Paul était absolument convaincu de sa sainteté et sa capacité d'effectuer des miracles.

En somme, ce livre est un festin des histoires curieuses et des affaires brumeuses. Je suis Catholique pratiquant et je n'ai pas été offense malgre les grandes doutes que tenait l'auteur a l'égard du Padre Pio. Les chemins du Seigneur constituent toujours un mystere.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Padre Pio was a Capuchin friar in Southern Italy during the first half of the twentieth century . After the appearance of stigma resembling that of Christ he gained a reputation for saintly works and miracles. This work evaluates his life and those works as well as his cult-like following and political influence both inside and outside the Church. A good and unbiased discourse.