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CNN Sunday Morning

Padre Pio to be Canonized

Aired June 16, 2002 - 07:03   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Up to a half-a-million pilgrims have flocked to Rome for the canonization of Padre Pio. CNN's Rome bureau chief, Alessio Vinci, joins me now live from St. Peter's Square. Hi, Alessio.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Kyra. I can tell you, it is an incredibly hot day here in Rome, with temperatures well above 90 Fahrenheit, but nevertheless, a quarter of a million people gathered here in St. Peter's Square and around it (UNINTELLIGIBLE) around St. Peter's to witness firsthand an extraordinary event here in Rome today, the canonization of Padre Pio, an Italian friar believed to be a man capable of producing miracles.

Padre Pio was a man who dedicated most of his life to prayer and devotion to Jesus Christ, who, in the words of his followers, suffered most of his life for the good of other people.

But to his followers, Padre Pio was not just a simple friar. As I said, a man capable of performing miracles, healing sick people, appearing sometimes in two different locations at the same time. But what made Padre Pio perhaps the most controversial and known figure in the Italian Catholic Church is the fact that he was bearing the stigmata, the wounds of Jesus Christ. And indeed, when those wounds appeared in his hands and feet and side when he was 17 years old, a lot of people there in San Giovanni Rotondo where he was based there, in southeastern Italy, believe that he was a truly remarkable man; those stigmata making him the most famous person at the time in the Catholic Church.

But also, the Vatican looked at him for many, many years with a great deal of suspicion. As a matter of fact, they basically put him in confinement for several years, prohibiting him from performing open air masses or masses to people who flocked by the thousands every week, every month to San Giovanni Rotondo. Eventually, Pope Paul VI rehabilitated him, and in 1999, Pope John Paul II made him the first person to be beautified, and today, here in front of 200,000 people, Padre Pio is finally, to most of his followers, a real saint. Back to you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Alessio Vinci, live from St. Peter's Square. Thanks, Alessio.

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