Articolo: What happens now after the transfer of Padre Pio’s Body? (EDITORIALE)

del numero: XL - n. 3 - May-June 2010

By Fr. Francesco D. Colacelli

Another “significant day” has  passed which can now be consigned to the history books on Padre Pio.  The spotlights have been switched off, the TV cameras of the major Italian broadcasting channels have  moved on  in search of other scoops, and the countless daily papers and magazines are now in quest of  other stories.

So what happens now in San Giovanni Rotondo  after the transfer of Padre Pio’s  body from the  shrine of Our Lady of Grace to the  crypt of the new church dedicated to him?

Padre Pio continues as  before his mission to intercede for the spiritual health of mankind  always more disorientated by the false ideals of the world.

He  continues to invite his spiritual children to come, an invitation that he left them, almost  like a last testament, when they asked him shortly before he died what they would do when he was no longer here: “I will be here with you even   more than before. Come to my tomb. Before to speak to me you had to wait. Now it will be I who wait for you. Come to my  tomb and you will receive more than before.”

He invites us now to a new crypt whose beauty enchants, and his devotees, who continue to come as before,  perhaps  now are able to get to him more easily, closer and even touch the casket in which his body rests.

However this easier accessibility and physical proximity to Padre Pio is not what motivated us, the Capuchin Friars Minor,  in full accord with our Archbishop, to transfer his body, especially since we knew that  we would be upsetting many who  are attached to the old crypt.

What interests us is Padre Pio’s message. For us Padre Pio  is more than the “miracle worker” and powerful intercessor as he has popularly come to be known. His stigmata  and other supernatural charisms were given to him by  the Lord  to give weight  to his real message,  that is his mission received from Christ: “to sanctify ourselves and to sanctify others.”  “This was always his first  concern and anxiety as a priest and spiritual father, that people should return to God, experience His mercy and then, spiritually renewed, discover again the beauty and joy of being Christians, of living in communion with Jesus, of belonging to His Church and practising the Gospel.”

These are the words that the Holy Father  addressed to us during his pastoral visit  to San Giovanni Rotondo and that our Archbishop repeated in the upper church of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina when the casket  containing Padre Pio’s body arrived from the old crypt.

 Padre Pio spent his whole life sanctifying himself and practising the Gospel. He wants now to continue to sanctify others and he invites all those who climb the Gargano mountain, just as he did during his life, to  turn their eyes  from him to Christ and to His Gospel, that is so wonderfully depicted in the mosaics of Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik in the new crypt.

This was and is Padre Pio’s message, and is what is happening now.

Dear readers, please allow me to make to you, at the end of  this brief reflection, a request. On 22 April, my fellow friars elected me as their Provincial Minister. Fully conscious of all my limitations I accepted as it seemed to me to be God’s will. Because of the confidence and affection that has grown over  these past seven years that I have shared with you in directing this magazine, I ask you to please remember me in your  prayers so that the Lord may enlighten and guide me in my new appointment on behalf of the friars and  whole Capuchin Province.

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