Catholicism

Exhumed body of Padre Pio goes on display

· Italian saint revered for cures and stigmata
· A million worshippers expected to view corpse

Some 15,000 worshippers gathered yesterday at the shrine of the Roman Catholic saint and mystic Padre Pio, as his exhumed body went on display for the first time since his death almost 40 years ago.

More than a million people are expected to file past a transparent casket holding his restored corpse between now and September 2009. Catholic practice allows for the remains of saints to be exhumed, checked for their state of deterioration and exhibited as relics for veneration.

Padre Pio's body is unusually central to the cult that surrounds him, and exceptionally controversial. For believers the visible evidence of his sanctity was the stigmata - the wounds of Jesus on the cross - that first appeared in 1910.

But according to a book published last year, Padre Pio acquired carbolic acid from a local pharmacist that may have been used to create his wounds. His body was exhumed on March 3.

The local bishop, Mons Umberto Domenico D'Ambrosio, told a press conference that, when the tomb was opened, there was no unpleasant smell. "When I asked the doctors for an explanation they told me it was up to me to provide an answer, not them."

A team of biochemists and other experts has worked since the exhumation to get the body into a fit state to be shown. Padre Pio's face was covered with a lifelike silicone mask of the type used in wax museums.

This prompted a circle of Padre Pio devotees to ask last night for an autopsy to establish that the remains were authentic. Forensic scientists who took part in the exhumation and attended yesterday's conference denied his face was badly decomposed. They said it had been decided to use the mask to protect the sensibilities of those who visited the crypt where the body is to go on show.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, whose Vatican department oversees the making of saints, celebrated mass for the faithful in the vast church built to Padre Pio's memory at San Giovanni Rotondo near the Adriatic coast.

Among those present was one of two people whose apparently inexplicable cures led to the friar's canonisation. Consilia De Martino, from Salerno, recovered from a ruptured lymph duct when she was 45 years old.

The Capuchin friar was made a saint by the late Pope John Paul II. He was credited by his fellow friars with more than 1,000 miraculous cures and interventions.

Until his death in 1968 the church authorities remained deeply sceptical of the claims made on Padre Pio's behalf. It was only the momentum generated by his devotees that prompted a rethink.

Another adherent to the cult surrounding the mystic friar emerged this week. Carlo Ancelotti, the AC Milan coach, said he sometimes prayed to the saint from the bench.

Maria Stella Candela, who arrived in San Giovanni Rotondo from Trapani on Sicily, told the Ansa news agency: "My 37-year-old son is sick. He has a tumour. I pray - I have always prayed to Padre Pio. And now I am here to pray some more."

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