The Show Must Go On

 

 

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was a cutter. Like a twentieth-century Amy Winehouse or one of those hunched-shoulder hollow-eyed Goth girls sporting black eyeliner and nail polish and satanic tats that you occasionally see congregating in parking lots on suburban high school campuses, Padre Pio practiced self-mutilation. According to a document in the Vatican archive, Pio ordered four grams of carbolic acid from a pharmacist from San Giovanni Rotundo and asked her to keep the order a secret. The BBC reports that at least one historian has concluded that Pio used the acid to create the stigmata on his hands and feet for which he became famous.

Notwithstanding this evidence that Pio was, in the words of the founder of Rome’s Catholic Hospital, “an ignorant and self-mutilating psychopath who exploited people’s credulity,” the Vatican under John Paul II canonized Padre Pio partly because of his lifelong stigmata (that’s a lot of carbolic acid!). 

   

Pio is now particularly popular. In Italy, his picture adorns rearview mirrors, dry cleaners, and police station walls (presumably not next to the “Most Wanted” posters). Here in the U.S., he is a favorite of my nemesis Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a fellow Capuchin who wears a cross-shaped pendant containing a piece of Pio.

 

In fact, Pio’s popularity has reached such heights that – on the fortieth anniversary of his death -- the Church has decided to set Pio up with his own Vegas show. Like Celine Dion.

 

Well, not that much like Celine. And not in Vegas. Instead, the church dug Pio out of the ground and propped him up in a glass case at his friary in Puglia, Italy. 700,000 people have signed up to visit and millions more are expected. 

 

You might ask, Why can’t these pilgrims put flowers on a grave like the rest of us? Why show the body itself? Well, exhuming saints is one of those kooky Catholic traditions, like stake-burning, book-banning, and bad homilies. Frequently, the Vatican digs up the bodies of the beatified and examines them for miraculous instances of preservation. The notion here is that the incorruptibility of their souls will be reflected in the incorruptibility of their flesh. 

 

Thus, thirty years after his death, it was discovered that Saint Anthony’s tongue, for example, was as unblemished as if he had just been preaching with it the day before. (Saint Bonaventure promptly took the tongue in his hands and kissed it, initiating the first French kiss between saints.) The entire body of Saint John Vianney, tongue and all, was also discovered to be perfectly preserved. And, like Pio, Vianney was so popular that the Church hacked his heart out of his body and put the show on the road, spinning off the heart from the body like Frasier from Cheers. The Vatican has twice dispatched the heart (sans body) on a world tour, most recently in 2006, where the heart saw the sights in Boston and Long Island and got lots of favorable reviews. I’ve wondered ever since how John’s heart enjoyed the Duck tour. Quack, quack. (For more on Vianney’s Boston visit, read my book.) 

 

Truth is, of course, you don’t even have to be a saint for the Church to want to dig you up; the Archdiocese of Boston has been trying to dig up the body of its former leader, rogue gay William Cardinal O’Connell, who himself exhumed a few bodies, for the past few years.

 

In any event, Pio’s case proved a little more complicated than that of Anthony and Vianney. (I blame the cutting.) It seems that there was a little unwelcome wear and tear from his forty years in the grave. Something less than perfection. 

 

Trying to put a good spin on the discovery, Archbishop D’Ambrosio described the newly exhumed body as being in “surprisingly good condition”:

 

 

 

We could clearly make out the beard. The top part of the skull is partly skeletal …. The knees, hands and [finger]nails [are] all clearly visible.

 

 

 

Worst of all: there were no signs of stigmata. Apparently, it’s difficult to find a drug store in the hereafter that will sell you sufficient quantities of carbolic acid.

 

Putting aside the lack of stigmata, the underwhelming evidence of preservation simply would not do for a religious rock star of Pio’s standing. It’s one thing for Mick Jagger to look like he’s been poorly mummified in a dank cellar even as the blood flows though his veins, but another thing entirely for Pio not to look his best even forty years after meeting his God.

 

So, what’s the Church to do????? Well, as if you needed any further proof the clergy are generally gay, the Archbishop’s immediate response was to send Pio’s body to a mortician to clean him up and “make the face more recognizable.” Nothing a little pancake make-up and eyeliner can’t cure, Archbishop D’Ambrosio seemed to be saying. Canyon Ranch, next stop!

Doctoring the saints for the sake of the faithful might seem a little underhanded, but I sympathize. I know just what Padre Pio feels like: many’s the morning after a Saturday night over-indulging in the unholy wine that I could have used a mortician’s skills to revive myself into looking suitably presentable in time for Sunday brunch. 

In any event, the showing of the new improved and prettier Pio is now open to the public. Perhaps I’ll stop by this summer on my way to Cinque Terre and see if I can get Pio to share with me some beauty tips. Carbolic acid facial scrub, anyone?

 

 

 

NOTE: after last week’s post about the Papal bus, some folks have pestered me as to what happened at the Pope’s Mass in Yankee Stadium. I’m afraid you are going to have to wait a bit longer, my pretties.

 

 

 

Unholy Wine of the Week: Owen Roe Sharecropper Oregon Pinot Noir 2006 is one of the mid-range wines produced by Owen Roe, a winery named after the Irish patriot. It is certainly a young wine, with predominant berry flavors, but somewhat one-dimensional with little of the earthiness of some of Owen Roe’s top-of-the-line productions like “The Kilmore.” Nevertheless, concentrated but not heavy. The high-alcohol is nicely balanced (even when it warms in the glass, it never comes to center stage. The acids seemed relatively low; I’d worry this one might get flabby over time, so I’d slurp it up now.  We had pork loin chops and Portobello mushrooms, which worked well.