From today’s Philadelphia Inquirer: “It was exactly a month ago today that Paul Pickel, owner of a Vero Beach, Fla., stained-glass studio, learned that $100,000 of his artwork had been stolen in Philadelphia. An 8-by-12-foot mosaic of Italian saint Padre Pio and two stained-glass windows depicting the Ascension of Christ were stored in a van that was stolen from a motel parking lot near Philadelphia International Airport. Pickel, 65, feared that his meticulous work would have been for nothing and that his works would be lost or destroyed, possibly putting his studio in jeopardy.” The rest of the  story is here.

With the possible exception of St. Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio likely ranks as Italy’s most popular saint. He’s surely popular in America, too, as this blog post details. He’s even popular in Reggio Calabria, home of my cousin the saint, Padre Gaetano Catanoso.

There is a lot of lure and legend and mysticism connected with this southern Italian priest (1887-1968), who famously bore the stigmata much of his adult life. Some of his powers, quite frankly, are beyond belief. The Vatican was highly skeptical of him in the 1920s, when his fame first rose (as I discuss in my book). But Pope John Paul II believed in Pio intrinsically, and revered him in life and death.

According to a web site about him: “As Padre Pio’s fame grew, his ministry began to take the center-stage at the friary. Many pilgrims flocked to see him [including Padre Gaetano in 1922, as I write in my book] and he spent around nineteen hours each day saying Mass, hearing confessions and corresponding, often sleeping not even two hours per day. His fame had the negative side effect that accusations against him made their way to the Holy Office in Rome (since 1983, known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, causing many restrictions to be placed on him. His accusers included high-ranking archbishops, bishops, theologians and physicians.”