Sept. 23 is Padre Pio’s feast day, and the film about Padre Pio, starring Shia LaBeouf because the title character, premiered just just a few weeks ago. The Twentieth-century saint is thought partly for his prophetic ability, his healing power and receiving the stigmata.
During his life and after his death, these expressions of Padre Pio’s holiness have been debated. Believers say that along with receiving the stigmata, Padre Pio prophesied that Karol Wojtyła would grow to be pope, that he healed a person with club feet and one other who was blind, and that he could read souls. If someone didn’t confess every sin on their conscience, he purportedly knew about it. They are saying he bore the injuries of Christ on his hands, feet and side. But others have questioned these feats, perhaps most notably the presence of Christ’s wounds, referred to as the stigmata, arguing that he caused the marks himself using chemicals.
To many, the stigmata can seem an odd “gift,” but Padre Pio will not be the primary to reportedly receive the injuries of Christ.
The stigmata—a history
The primary stigmatic (an individual whose body shows wounds like those of Christ) was St. Francis of Assisi, the founding father of the Franciscan order, in 1224. He is alleged to have borne the marks of the nails of the crucifixion on his hands and feet, and the wound from the lance in his side. Other stigmatics, like St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, bore only marks from the crown of thorns.
The word stigmata, the plural of stigma, comes from the Greek, meaning “mark” or “brand.”
There have been about 250 recorded instances of the stigmata, and roughly 90 percent of those stigmatics have been women. Nonetheless, not all have been declared saints and even affirmed as legitimate by the church.
The stigmata often is reported to occur alongside some form of spiritual ecstasy or visions, which are likely to occur either on the reception of the marks or more usually. Normally, physical pain and anguish for the sinful state of the world occur together with the injuries, showing the stigmatic’s connection to Christ.
To many, the stigmata can seem an odd “gift,” but Padre Pio will not be the primary to reportedly receive the injuries of Christ.
For St. Francis, the stigmata appeared when he received a vision of an angel crucified, and the injuries then appeared on his own body. His biographer, Thomas of Celano, also wrote that he suffered more illnesses after receiving the stigmata.
St. Catherine of Siena, however, received the stigmata during one Lent, nevertheless it was visible only to herself, yet she is alleged to have felt the pain of the marks. They reportedly appeared on her body after her death.
The stigmata appeared on St. Gemma Galgani on Thursday from about 8 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Friday every week for the 4 years she lived after receiving the injuries. She had been sick and paralyzed when she was 19, and two years later, in 1899, after years of praying for a cure, she received a vision through which the injuries of Jesus were on fire before they then touched her as well. They remained on her body after her death. (St. Catherine de’ Ricci suffered an analogous “ecstasy of the Passion” weekly from Thursday at noon until Friday at 4 p.m.)
St. Rita of Cascia, who lived throughout the fifteenth century, asked Jesus for a bit of his pain and suffering, specifically for certainly one of the thorns from Jesus’ crown to embed itself in her head. Her prayer was answered, and she or he lived with the pain of Jesus, uniting herself to his suffering. Though her wound smelled rotten when she was alive (causing her to live other than her fellow nuns), her incorrupt body emitted the “odor of sanctity,” a pleasing or flowery scent.
The stigmata—Padre Pio’s experience
Padre Pio, like other stigmatics, reportedly had a vision that led to his receiving the five wounds. He, too, had been sickly his whole life (he was discharged from the Medical Corps during World War I due to his sick health). The primary priest to receive the stigmata, he was prohibited from celebrating Mass in public and from visiting with people for just a few years within the Thirties due to church suspicion of his works.
Padre Pio allegedly experienced transverberation of the center—two months before he received the stigmata—through which he suffered horrible pain in his side for 2 days, said to be a part of participation in Jesus’ suffering for the world. He was in a position to bilocate, in line with the testimony of Padre Carmelo Durante, the superior of Padre Pio’s community in 1954, and it was said he was within the town healing people or attending meetings while being concurrently within the friary.
Padre Pio faced questions from authorities, including Pope John XXIII within the Nineteen Sixties, in regards to the veracity of his miracles, from the healings he performed to the stigmata he bore. Many argue to today that he could have used carbolic acid on his hands to make the marks on his body. Nonetheless, the pope who canonized him, St. John Paul II, had his own encounter with Padre Pio in 1947 and believed in Padre Pio’s prophetic powers; and he beatified and canonized him.
Padre Pio’s canonization, like those of all other saints with the stigmata, didn’t come about because of this of the stigmata but from a lifetime of virtue and the healing miracles worked through their name after their death.
The stigmata—a female phenomenon
A really high percentage of stigmatics have been women. Some have attributed this to women being more energetic generally in religion, or to women’s lack of power within the church, especially in previous centuries. Others have argued that experiencing the injuries of Christ lent women with the stigmata a sort of authority within the church through which they haven’t any clerical power. Most also had little earthly power in their very own lives—Marie Rose Ferron was bedridden; St. Lidwina was paralyzed; Bl. Elena Aiello survived stomach cancer.
There have been about 250 recorded instances of the stigmata, and roughly 90 percent of those stigmatics have been women.
In The Devotion and Promotion of Stigmatics in Europe, c. 1800–1950: Between Saints and Celebrities, published in 2021, Tine Van Osselaer writes, “the femaleness of the body added to the unease about its visibility.” Seeing women (who were then often hidden, remaining in the house) on this state of getting such a powerful connection to God was an uncomfortable reality for a lot of who saw men because the spiritual authorities.
The stigmata—an argument
As with many miraculous and inexplicable events from the church’s history, the stigmata will not be without its many doubters. The Catholic Church has established criteria for determining real stigmata, though one needn’t imagine within the phenomenon to be Catholic. Saints or blesseds with the stigmata have been canonized or beatified due to their holy deeds and other works attributed to them, not due to their stigmata alone.
The primary recorded case of stigmata occurred within the thirteenth century, which for some raises questions on the primary 1,000-plus years after Christ’s death, when there isn’t a record of anyone reporting these wounds. Some note that the start of the era through which the church has a record of individuals claiming to experience the stigmata aligns with the period in church history when the church embraced with special emphasis the popularity of the humanity of Jesus, especially as he was on the cross. Around that very same time St. Francis of Assisi received the stigmata, the feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated on the Christian calendar for the primary time.
As Ms. Van Osselaer writes, “the bodies of the stigmatics not only referred to that of Christ and of stigmatized predecessors, but additionally symbolized the present state of society—they referred to each the past and the current.” Some bore similar wounds to other saints after they’d heard their stories. Others had more pronounced suffering when their wounds appeared to be politically vital.
As with many miraculous and inexplicable events from the church’s history, the stigmata will not be without its many doubters.
For instance, within the nineteenth century, the stigmata, once a really private and insular experience, became almost a tourist attraction. That is what happened within the case of Louise Lateau, a Belgian woman who was something of a celeb Catholic in a world where spectacle reigned with newfound circuses, and Catholicism was politically threatened in northern Europe. For many who visited her on Fridays for her weekly experience of the Passion, she represented a silent political voice for Catholicism, especially for those from neighboring Germany, a recent and Protestant-ruled country, who could see her physical suffering as analogous to their very own political strife.
Lateau was also visited by lots of of doctors and theologians. “Lateau’s body was…not the one exceptional body to be scrutinized by medical examiners (as were the bodies of the hysterics in La Salpêtrière), or gazed at by the curious (as with other spectacles or fantasies) and the faithful (as with the bodies of those miraculously cured in Lourdes),” explained Tine Van Osselaer in her chapter “On Stigmata, Suffering and Sanctity.” The Vatican wrote that her case for beatification will not be open.
Some stigmatics have been proven to be hoaxes, reminiscent of Magdalena de la Cruz, who admitted on her deathbed that she faked the injuries. Others like Therese Neumann were unable to offer proof of the injuries or their divine nature when requested by scientific researchers.
The lifetime of a stigmatic is commonly full of trauma, such that their wounds could align with the physical and mental ailments they already suffered.
Most individuals with the stigmata have suffered some sort of ailment, including but not limited to: hallucinations, epilepsy, traumatic injuries, self-mutilation, extremely low self-esteem and anorexia or inedia (including consuming only the Eucharist). This doesn’t include religious ecstasy or visions, which most had at the very least once. Therese Neumann may need had a then-unheard-of case of multiple personality disorder or hypochondria.
The self-proclaimed devil’s advocate Herbert Thurston, S.J., wrote that the suggestibility of the so-called stigmatics lends itself to a “crucifixion complex.” The stigmatics’ marks vary: The lance wound within the side is typically on the left, sometimes the suitable; many stigmatics have wounds within the palm, whereas Jesus would have been nailed through the wrist (as some more moderen stigmatics have allegedly experienced); and a few have markings directly corresponding to a crucifix at their local church. This might suggest that the stigmatics imprinted the marks on themselves, either purposefully or while in religious trance; on this case, they’d not have been divinely caused.
The lifetime of a stigmatic is commonly full of trauma, such that their wounds could align with the physical and mental ailments they already suffered. Some could also be skeptical of stories of the stigmata, but one mustn’t ignore the spiritual power of the concept that people—many on the margins of society, especially women—might be so connected to God that they accept and take part his pain nonstop for years of their lives, and in the method cultivate an analogous repentant and compassionate sentiment in others.