And the title of today's talk, The Devil Lives Next Door and He Wears a Habit.
So what earth can this be about?
And we can investigate here how Padre Pio, in a sense, is on trial.
Hello, friends of Following Padre Pio.
On this channel, we bring you a series of short stories on the absolutely incredible
life of our great saint, Capuchin friar, mystic, and miracle worker Padre Pio.
So do stay tuned to find out more about Padre Pio and to see what his intercession could
do for you.
Just a quick reminder, that at the moment, we do have a special Lenten selection of videos,
every week different videos, and to see this Lenten selection, just go to the video description
directly below here and click on the link through to our Lenten selection.
In today's story, the Capuchin Bishop Girolamo Bortignon, and he was of the Padua diocese,
began his real opposition and his fight against Padre Pio in 1959.
So they were both from the Capuchin order.
And now he is Bishop of Padua.
And he has based his whole fight, all of his allegations, on the following.
There was a decree from some time back from the Holy Office that had not officially been
revoked and still somehow remained in place, kind of against Padre Pio, just uncertain
about Padre Pio, and therefore believers, he said, should be warned against, and they
must stay away, from this controversial monk, as he put it, who poses such a danger.
And so this is happening in the church, these controversies, these fights going on.
And it seems that for more than 20 years Bishop Bortignon had been writing in the diocesan
bulletins, but in 1959 he really stepped it up, became more forceful in prohibiting the
faithful and directing them that they must stay away from this friar, from Padre Pio,
because, he claimed, that decree has not been revoked, and indication he said, he claimed,
are that the Holy See will continue in this direction.
But he is a little bit dishonest at the same time because he did not mention a word, he
was absolutely silent, with regard to the indictment.
Pope Pius XII himself, by his words and by his deeds, was extinguishing any shadow of
doubt created by these earlier pronouncements.
And nor did Bortignon mention the fact that Padre Pio was confessor to so many cardinals
and bishops and prelates and religious from all over the world, especially from Rome.
So all of these things counting in Padre Pio's favor, they did not get a mention.
But Bortignon continued, and in opposition to all of these facts and this evidence and
the direction of Pius XII that he was taking, Bortignon reached the point of now he prohibited
anything to do with Padre Pio.
So any mass celebrated mentioning Padre Pio, prayers or celebrations, any connection with
Padre Pio was prohibited in his diocese.
And he targeted his whole struggle against the prayer groups that were promoting Padre
Pio, even though these prayer groups had existed in his diocese from before the time that he
had become the bishop there.
But the faithful in that diocese continued.
They continued making modest contributions to the good works that they saw Padre Pio
doing in Saint Giovanni Rotondo.
And so this is contrary to the bishop's determinations.
And so to him, to Bortignon, this represented now a hemorrhaging of the finances in his
diocese.
So he simply had to act, and he stepped up his opposition and he focused on his real
war against the two local leaders of the prayer group.
And these leaders were Attilio Negrisolo and Nello Castello.
They were two diocesan priests, diocesan fathers, and apparently they lived exemplary lives,
but their crime was being friends of Padre Pio and of promoting works of Padre Pio.
But because they would not accept this completely arbitrary stipulation of the bishop, a persecution
of the priests began and apparently it got pretty nasty.
It was reminiscent of a Communist-style witch hunt.
So no proofs were necessary.
No facts were needed.
Without being able to give even their testimonies, not even being allowed to defend themselves.
We've got to ask is that not an abuse of authority?
And then with threats of severe penalties, they were now compelled, they were obliged
to plead guilty to a number of crimes, a whole bunch of crimes.
And they also had to denounce Padre Pio as their co-conspirator of both themselves and
of their prayer group.
So now imagine being a member of such a prayer group caught in all of this confusion.
This confusion reigned at that time, and with such heavy-handed tactics in order to crush
it.
There's another fellow by the name of Brunato, and he summarized in what is called The White
Book the charges that Bortignon laid, that he brought against the two priests.
And apparently there were six charges.
The first was conspiracy against the authority of the Pope and ecclesial authority, this
is for supporting Padre Pio.
But according to Bortignon Padre Pio was organizing nothing less than a coup d'etat in order to
overthrow the Pope.
I'm not sure where he gets his evidence from, but he doesn't sound like he presented the
evidence.
And the second charge instigation, the bishop's alleged Padre Pio of trying to mislead the
faithful and to establish against the established ecclesiastical authority and to incite them
against authority.
So that was instigation.
The third charge was schism and heresy.
They're accusing Padre Pio of schism and heresy because they said he was forming a sect that
rejected the church.
And supposedly Padre Pio was now going to be the new leader, kind of a Pope, in a sense
of a breakaway church, some sort of charismatic type of leader in their church.
So that was the accusation.
Superstition and idolatry was another accusation, because he alleged that Padre Pio was the
new savior of this new sect that he had kind of invented the idea of, and that they were
somehow supposedly worshiping Padre Pio and considering him to be God, and therefore it
was idolatry.
We've all heard funny accusations like this against the Catholics, but now it's from within
the church.
And then the fifth allegation was establishing a secret society, supposedly along the lines
of Freemasonry, he said.
So where he got this from we don't know.
False mysticism was the final thing because the followers of Padre Pio, he said, belittle
legitimate authority because they continue to send donations to San Giovanni Rotondo.
So we've seen how he targeted these two priests in particular, who had been promoting Padre
Pio.
And in his passionate pleas, Bishop Bortignon, he went so far as to affirm that Padre Pio
even negates Christ somehow, and even Christ's redemption, somehow placing himself as the
new Mediator and Redeemer of Christ.
So this was the allegation by a bishop of the church against Padre Pio.
This other fella, Mueller Testa, wrote that it was in fact all so much nonsense, false
accusations that not even some inquisition from past centuries could fabricate all of
this.
It was all fabricated, he said.
But this did not stop Bortignon from wanting to stop and completely eliminate Padre Pio's
influence in his diocese and thereby, I guess, the whole church.
And so he obliged everyone that they had to make a definitive break.
And he based it on the Canon 2335, that they would be excommunicated if they did not sign
in writing that they were leaving this strange society of Padre Pio's.
So the bishop would stop at nothing.
And he actually even went further because he encouraged, he urged his parishioners that
they were not to provide food or shelter to these two priests.
So as far as he's concerned, those priests could starve for supporting Padre Pio.
And so it had really come to our Lord's prophecy being true that the time is coming, when anyone
who kills you will think that they are offering a service to God.
So it's a bizarre twist of things.
So what a cross to have to bear, literally being starved, been denied a roof over their
heads by a legitimate church authority if they would not renounce Padre Pio.
You can imagine the pressure on them.
And all of this was against Padre Pio, who was a mere, humble, Capuchin priest.
He was stuck up there way high in the Gargano Mountains, out of the way.
For health reasons he'd been put there, and all of this because God had really blessed
Padre Pio with these extraordinary gifts.
Denied anything, not even a trial, just accusations and seemingly trying to make it look at as
if Rome supported all of this.
And that is what Padre Pio and his followers were up against.
So how did it all work out in the end?
Well, the priests, they now tried everything they could to reestablish themselves, to reestablish
their good names.
They appealed to their bishop and they appealed to the Vatican, but nothing seemed to help.
And then finally later on, they did receive the consolation of being transferred and somehow
ending up living directly under Padre Pio's influence, sharing in the life of Padre Pio
and his teachings.
And then later on Pope Pius XII died, he passed away, and John the XXIII was elected and he
was more sympathetic to Padre Pio.
And yet at the same time, this Bishop Bortignon, he had become papal secretary and so he starts
to spread his influence there too.
And so it continues, a battle between good and evil.
And this is even within the church and we see things like this today.
There's nothing new.
And next time on this channel, we're going to be comparing Padre Pio to some other saints
within the church, in particular as Saint Eymard, who was the apostle of Eucharistic
adoration.
So we're going to be comparing and contrasting him and Padre Pio.
And a reminder that we do have a Lenten selection of videos.
Go to the video description below, click on the link to see our Lenten selections.
(singing)