Frank Rega's Amazing Miracles of Padre Pio...

…is available at the Spirit Daily bookstore. 

This book is sweet wine for the soul, a riveting collection of miracles worked by Padre Pio. The prodigies which could be seen by the human eye include a young man struck down in the prime of youth by a most devastating tumor when cloth that had touched Pio's body touched the young fellow and he was healed, and the time Padre Pio went by bilocation into the hallowed halls of the Vatican and limped towards Pius XI entreating His Holiness not to censure him so much that all his faculties as a priest would be stripped, and his ministry would be finished with his reputation in ruin. Frank Rega rightly classifies each occasion when Pio was seen to use his charisms and gifts as being miracles, and for this alone he has done the study of the life of Pio a great service, for mystical gifts such as bilocation just like inexplicable healings are always miraculous.

The most extraordinary miracle in the book could not be perceived by human eyes when it occurred: it concerned a man named Giacomo whose body was ravaged by a rare type of polyarthritis when he was only 16. He was left almost completely paralyzed and in wracking pain, he only found little relief when he lay on a flat bed wheelchair suspended at 45-degrees. A career in sports ended and so did his relationship with the girl he loved. Giacoma steeped himself in bitterness and let rip foul blasphemies. This continued for 7 years.

Then Giacomo went to Pio desperate for a cure. But when he was with Pio, whose hands and feet rained blood from excruciating crucifixion wounds, Giacomo enjoyed a blissful miracle when he was relieved of his craving for a cure. He tasted the honey of sweet acceptance, kissed his cross of handicap and offered his pain as a gift to Our Lord, in atonement for the sins of mankind. This "unseen" miracle did not get rapturous attention at the time - the other pilgrims just saw a man lying on a bed of iron bars who had to be spoonfed.

But time would show this miracle for its magnificence. Our Lord left Giacomo the use of his fingers, his keen intelligence and gift for writing. Giacomo could write - and write beautifully - he wrote books and thousands of letters each year to sick people edifying them as to their divine role in offering their suffering. When Giacomo passed, Padre Pio looked up at the population of Heaven, revealed that Giacomo was in paradise and celebrated as a great Saint, an honor he had previously reserved for St Therese of Lisieux and St Philomena. Glorious Giacomo, pray for us!

Another celebratory review by Donal Anthony Foley praises the collection of miracle stories as an "inspiring read", and like me, Foley singled out the greatest miracle as being that which was awarded Giacomo Gaglione. 

The book has  also garnered a rave review from Francis Phillips who hailed it as, "a life-enhancing book" which she is recommending especially to English Catholics, "Who tend to smile benignly at their more excitable Latin brethren, forgetting that Christ himself worked many miracles during his life." I myself have urged young folk in England to read it, namely my close friend Danny who is leafing through it at the moment.