WHY I DON’T TRUST “PADRE PIO” AI

 

Wow - the last year has been like a dream come true - today marks one year since the publication of Padre Pio and You. It has been exhilarating; by way of my meager writing ability others have come to know Padre Pio, and some now love him as I do.

I’m reveling in the irony that the very things I wanted to exclude from the book are the areas that interest people the most. 

I didn’t want to include that as a teenager I was mystically transported to Padre Pio’s cell and he spoke the chilling line, “I am waiting for you.” I feared it was diluting the presence of Padre Pio in divulging too much about myself.

But the book did not work or make sense without a highly personal introduction and earlier drafts had the first readers all asking me to introduce Pio the way I'd introduced him to them.  Then after slaving for several years, I had to give in and share about my first meetings with Padre Pio. 

It is not always a sign of being special or especially saintly if Padre Pio intervenes in your life.

In his lifetime, Pio appeared to a schoolteacher who had traduced followers of him as being sick in the head, and told him to practice the Faith as well as informing him, "happiness is not of this world."

7 years after he died in 1975, Pio appeared to a woman on the table in an abortion den where a bicycle pump was to be used on her. She didn’t know who the father of the baby was, and Pio fixed her with his famously penetrating glare (which I know well) and told her to get away from there. The mother had the little one and went on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to San Giovanni Rotondo, where she confided her story to a disciple who gave it to me. 

Pio appeared to an alcoholic husband and father, who had come home delirious and drunk, beaten his wife while their baby watched. Pio burned with anger, he was at his most severe and warned the young man that if he didn't stop, his wife would have to leave him. 

In the age of AI, I’m all more grateful for having met Padre Pio personally on a few occasions because it means the mocked-up versions of him don’t hold sway over me. 

I was having a chicken lunch with friends (who are expert in AI) in their garden and they suggested that when I die, my tombstone will read, “Padre Pio appeared to me when I was 14”. I countered that by saying when I’m 6 feet under in a wooden bunk and dead, my tombstone will say, “I disagree”. 

And perhaps to my death, I will be trying in my limited way to etch a true portrait of him.

When I review material about Padre Pio created solely by AI, which isn’t sourced and is presented as being totally accurate, I feel a sense of great unease, restlessness and find myself asking, what am I meant to do with this?  Well, I try my best to point out the details that are truthful but the overall impression left by certain pictures created solely by AI is one of misdirection, it imbues Pio with a fake persona and leaves us with a spurious sense of his soul, especially when it concerns Pio's fights against the demonic.

A popular image of Padre Pio, as an outgoing, glowingly happy and ebullient youth in the arms of his parents is totally false. The faces are not remotely like Pio or his Mama and Papa.

The boy in the image was purportedly Padre Pio as a teenager and real descriptions of Pio at that time have him with a deadly serious expression and ready to flinch at any moment because he had known dire demonic attack. At the age of 15 on the eve of going to seminary, the Lord showed Padre Pio a vision of the devil as a horrific monster whose frame went from earth to the sky, and the Lord introduced him as an evil being who would do all in his power to fight him. 

Pictures of Pio as a boy portraying him as not having a care in the world and as though he is walking on air do not do justice to the young child who was vexed exceedingly by the devil in the womb, the crib and even outside his own home. Pio's soul wore layers upon layers of battle fatigues. 

I believe people who rely absolutely on AI to make media about Padre Pio are often well-intentioned. God bless them. It does not, however, alter the facts.

My advice is to always look for "the Pio stare", the one he fixed me with, and perhaps his gaze is looking at you right now. 

Pio had happy moments of laughter and mirth, lest we forget his favorite joke was about a few country bumpkins who took a train journey for the first time and when they were in a tunnel thought they were in Hell and screamed at the top of their lungs. One grabbed the other and said, "Don't worry, I have roundtrip tickets."

It’s ironic in a time when AI is said to be replacing humans in the workforce and in many areas of life, that increasingly in the past year I’ve been given an extra task each day in telling people what is accurate and not about pictures, songs, poems, and even whole articles and mini-books written about Pio that are sometimes inaccurate, or only truthful in a few details. 

Ruefully, I’ve made the decision not to be a fact checker for people who will not admit to using AI, are unwilling and bristle with reluctance when I ask as to the books they’ve not read and people who they have not interviewed. On a few occasions, they’ve made it clear that they do not want any book or any person distracting from the AI generated media that they pretend to be solely their own work. Fine. But through all the haze and confusion, the authentic, diamond-bright presence and intercession of Pio will emerge against the dark foil of falsity. 

I'm learning more about Pio all the time, and just yesterday, I inhaled in one sitting Susan De Bartoli's amazing Padre Pio's American Daughter, The Story of Mary Pyle. One case struck me as healing for people who can't forgive those who cheated them out of their inheritance. 

3 sisters who were devoted to Padre Pio had a big falling-out, their father died and left his estate to one sister, and not the others. They were feuding bitterly for a long time, and when they spoke to Pio about it, he asked, "Whose money was it?" They replied it was their father's. Pio concluded, "Then it was his to do with as he wished."

What next?  There is so much to be done; only a handful of Padre Pio's many prophecies are known, and will be revealed by 2068, and much writing and discussion is needed to make them accessible and easy-to-employ by the souls who are the human actors who will make the prophecies come to pass. I will only be going part of the way; I'll hand on the baton to others because I was told I'll die at 67, in 2051. Please Jesus, Pio will meet me at Heaven's gate and shepherd me into eternity securely, as he's promised to do for all his spiritual children and disciples. 

For my remaining 25 years, I want to make known that the prophecies state there have been and will be disciples of Pio, the first were his own parents, and his Mother, Giuseppa is an intercessor for people who've suffered miscarriages and lost young children. Dear friends of mine, a young married couple lost many young babies, and when Giuseppa's help was asked, they had a healthy baby girl. 

Another Pio prophecy has Russia teaching America a lesson in Catholicism. I'm also particularly fascinated by Pio's mystical communication with people in Communist Russia, especially during the dictatorship of Stalin and Khrushchev. There are so many personal accounts to be collected that will influence Russia's future, and our own. 

Perhaps I'm only getting started. 

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For now, I hold that my book is a good foundation for people to get to know Pio. Presently and at this time of writing, the book has 129 reviews on Amazon, and I'm grateful to everyone who took the time to rate and review.  If you feel called, please leave a review.