![]() ![]() ![]() Keepers of the Padre Pio cult, they controlled access to the future saint, handled money coming in for the hospital, and appeared to have free run of the monastery at all hours. The latest bout of anxiety about Padre Pio stemmed from a set of audiotapes surreptitiously recorded in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in San Giovanni Rotondo that purported to document improper relations between Pio and a group of lay sisters, who formed a kind of protective guard around him. And yet many in the Vatican, which had alternately tried to suppress and support the cult of Padre Pio, remained skeptical. ![]() ![]() His immense popularity (and a sizable amount of Marshall Plan money) had permitted Padre Pio to build one of Italy’s largest and most advanced hospitals in Puglia’s remote, mountainous Gargano peninsula. Believers from dozens of different countries sent tens of thousands of letters each year with prayers, wishes, and, often, cash. A veritable black market had sprung up in relics of the living saint: strips of bloody shirts, bandages, and other objects he had touched. ![]()
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