Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (299 page)

waiting for him. In the process he was able 'to mislead insistent inquirers and put off the curious.

"Where were you, father? We were looking for you everywhere!" Pater Pio chuckled: "I was walking to and fro in front of you, but you didn't take any notice."'

The suffering father ('I suffer when I do not suffer' - Pio on Pio), even conjured up sweet smells in frowsty rooms. Dr. Romanelli thought it unseemly of Pater Pio to use scent, as he imagined he did. A Capuchin explained to him that Pio's blood was impregnated with the 'sweet scent'. When a Dr. Festa took a piece of linen soaked in Pater Pio's blood to Rome to have it examined in a laboratory, his fellow travellers asked him what it was that smelt so nice. In July 1930 a living-room in Bologna suddenly smelt of roses and narcissi. A sick girl had just returned from San Giovanni Rotondo.

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[*] Being bodily present at two different places simultaneously.

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The heavenly aroma lasted for a quarter of an hour and then the sick girl was able to move her paralysed arm again. There can be no doubt about the phenomena of smell, because the number of witnesses has been very large over four decades. In the words of Michael Faraday (1791-1867), there is obviously 'nothing too miraculous to be true'.

Pope Benedict XV anticipated all requests for canonization by saying: 'Pater Pio is truly a man of God.'

Pater Pio bore the stigmata of Christ before the eyes of contemporaries. His famous predecessor, Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), was the first person to be afflicted with officially attested stigmata. And he was canonized two years after his death. His stigmata are legendary; the saint who talked to the birds has long been singing in the choir of angels. Since St. Francis was marked by the stigmata, about 350 people are supposed to have been similarly afflicted. Not all stigmatics bear genuine signs. For example, Therese Neumann (1898-1962) from Konnersreuth in Oberpfalz, Germany, who hit the headlines.is reputed to have been a fake. The theologian Dr. Joseph Hanauer [14] suspects that Therese scratched the wounds on her own body, because she often sent visitors out of her room and then showed them the bleeding wounds when they returned. Unofficially it is said that Therese received the stigmata during Lent 1926, and had visions of the Passion of Our Lord on every Friday except for Christian holidays.

Reports however of devout people who have borne the marks of the crucifixion on hands, feet and below the heart are announced too often and by too many witnesses to be dismissed as nonsense.

The 'marks of the Lord Jesus' (Galatians 6:17) are reputed to hurt like the wounds of the crowning with thorns and nailing to the cross; they bleed on Fridays for reference and are incurable by normal treatment.

Are we faced with confirmation of an unassailable miracle? I must admit in advance that no proven explanation of the stigmatic phenomena exists as yet, that is why they are still surrounded by a thick,