The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [32]
“Sounds bizarre,” Castle said.
“In a way it is. But the faithful believe that because Padre Pio’s body had not deteriorated in death, it was a sign from God that his life was holy and he is now a saint. Otherwise they think the body would not have been preserved like this, in an incorrupt state, some forty years after he died.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Not for a minute,” Gabrielli answered without hesitation. “But that’s not the important part of the story. When the body was first exhumed, Bishop Domenico d’Ambrosio examined the body. I know Bishop d’Ambrosio quite well. He told me Padre Pio’s body was well preserved; that part is true. From the very beginning of the exhumation, you could clearly see his beard and he was still wearing the mittens that covered the stigmata on his wrists. There were parts of his body that had decayed. You could see the skull and part of the cheekbone was exposed. The public never saw his whole body, just his body in his brown Capuchin habit with an elaborate silk stole embroidered with crystals and gold. His face was covered with a silicone mask that was very life-like. But the hands were so well preserved that d’Ambrosio said Padre Pio’s fingernails were intact. The point is that d’Ambrosio examined Padre Pio’s hands and feet and swore there were no signs of the stigmata. Legend has it that Padre Pio’s stigmata disappeared at the moment of his death. That was the testimony of his fellow friars and the doctor who attended to him at his death.”
“That’s convenient, isn’t it,” Castle said sarcastically. “The moment he dies, the stigmata just disappear.”
“But there’s more,” Gabrielli went on. “A historian digging through the Vatican archives found a letter from a pharmacist who claimed he visited Padre Pio in 1919 and Padre Pio gave him an empty bottle that he asked him to fill with carbolic acid. The pharmacist said Padre Pio claimed he needed the carbolic acid to disinfect syringes for injections. Padre Pio also used other common medications of the time, like Valda tablets, which were a mild, plant-based antiseptic that people used to take for throat or bronchial ailments.”
“What’s the significance of the carbolic acid?”
“I’ve got a video right now on the Internet that shows how you can create stigmata with commonly available chemicals. You apply iron chloride on one hand and let it dry and put potassium ferrocyanide on the other hand and let it dry. Then when you rub your two palms together the chemicals combine to produce what looks like stigmata wounds. The chemical action is painless and disappears quickly, once you wash your hands. On the same video I show how you can customize a razor to scrape the palms of your hands to produce bleeding sores that look exactly like stigmata. Carbolic acid is a mild disinfectant that will keep open wounds from getting disinfected. Going back to 1918, visitors to Padre Pio claimed his wounds had a smell of carbolic acid and that he covered up the smell with eau de cologne, claiming his blood had a miraculous fragrance.”
“So you are convinced Padre Pio was a fraud?” Castle asked.
“Yes, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever,” the chemist answered.
“Padre Pio would never let any physician examine his wounds to see if they penetrated clear through his wrists. He always claimed the pain was too severe when doctors tried to see whether or not their fingers would meet through the stigmata wounds on his wrists, and no physician ever managed to convince him to go under anesthetic to be examined in a hospital setting. Padre Pio always wore those mittens over his hands, so that the stigmata were largely covered up. Padre Pio was serious about hiding his wounds. All you could ever see were photographs that showed bleeding palms from a distance, or what appeared to be scabs of crusted blood at the edges of the mittens, supposedly resulting from blood flowing from the wounds. But who knew? As far as I