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Friday, October 05, 2007
Waterford miracle features in new Padre Pio book
A County Waterford miracle, brought about through the intercession of Saint Padre Pio, the Italian stigmatic, mystic and wonderworker, is featured in a new book, Padre Pio: The Irish Connection, by award-winning journalist Colm Keane, which chronicles the miracles, cures, perfumes and visions experienced by Irish devotees of the saint.
“A young girl, 12 years of age, was riding a pony up by her home when the pony shied and she was thrown off,” Mary, from West Waterford, says of a neighbour’s miraculous recovery following a fall from a horse.
“She was on the road for about three quarters of an hour. Nobody thought anything of it, that she was missing or anything.
Her mother eventually went looking for her and found her unconscious on the road. She was taken to a nearby hospital where she was kept for about three or four weeks. She had major injuries to her spine and her back. There was no hope for her.
“She regained consciousness after about a fortnight but she was semi-paralysed; they thought she’d never walk again and they didn’t think she’d live.
A group of local people then decided they should give some assistance. So we collected money to help with medical expenses. We gave it to her mother who was very depressed and very down, with no hope. Unfortunately, the girl then developed pneumonia. The prognosis was very grim.
“Before that I had dealings with Donald Enright, from Cork, who brings one of Padre Pio’s mitts to people in need of help. We got him down with his mitt. The girl had pneumonia the day he arrived and was critical. They were all sitting in the house, crying. Things were bleak. He prayed over her with his mitt. The mother told us that from the day he arrived she turned around. There was a dramatic recovery from that day on. He never had to return to her again.
“She spent six months in rehabilitation after that, but that was just to help her physical recovery. She then went on to do her secondary school and she went to college. She now lives a perfectly normal life. I find it extraordinary what happened.
I had gone to see the girl a good few times when she was sick and there was no hope, they had no more to do for her. I believe it was all down to Padre Pio and his intercession. I definitely believe it was his presence.”
Padre Pio: The Irish Connection, which will be available in bookshops on 4 October, marks the culmination of over one year of intensive research by award-winning author Colm Keane, who has spoken to people in 25 counties of Ireland, north and south of the border. All royalties will be donated to the Capuchin Day Centre for Homeless People, in Church Street, Dublin.
There are accounts of scientifically inexplicable recoveries from cancer, heart disease and brain damage, along with revivals from blood clots, strokes, multiple sclerosis and life-threatening viral infections. Also featured are visions, apparitions and supernormal coincidences.
Elsewhere in the book, early Irish pilgrims speak of trail-blazing journeys to San Giovanni Rotondo in the 1950s and ’60s, while visits by devotees to Padre Pio’s beatification in 1999 and his canonisation in 2002 are vividly recounted. Using personal testimonies, Padre Pio: The Irish Connection documents the widespread influence of this complex and intriguing Italian stigmatic, mystic, wonder-worker and saint, who bore the wounds of Christ for half a century until his death in 1968.
Colm Keane has published 16 books including bestsellers Nervous Breakdown, Death and Dying, The Stress File, The Teenage Years and The Jobs Crisis. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and Georgetown University, Washington DC. As a broadcaster, he won a Jacob’s Award and a Glaxo Fellowship for European Science Writers. His most recent publications are Hurling’s Top 20, Gaelic Football’s Top 20 and Ireland’s Soccer Top 20.
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