Padre Pio: The True Story by C. Bernard Ruffin
Just who or what was Padre Pio? Thousands called him the Prophet of the People, while others denounced him as a fraud and a huckster. Many regarded him as a Holy Man of the Gargano, while more cynical observers saw him only as a fanatical madman. His family remembered him as a child of gentle humor who loved playing practical jokes. His fellow friars knew him as a man conversed with Jesus, the saints, and angels and who, for the last fifty years of his life, bore in his own flesh the wounds of Christ. At least two popes said privately that he was a saint. In Padre Pio: The True Story, C. Bernard Ruffin, a Lutheran minister and author of the well-received biography Fanny Crosby, presents the first full-length biography in English of Francesca Forgione, better known as Padre Pio - the man National Review described as the hottest thing in mysticism in the twentieth century. After years of sitting through Padre Pio's correspondence, interviewing dozens of his associated, and researching the letters and papers of those who knew him, Ruffin reports in fascinating detail the events, plots, and machinations that surrounded the controversial friar. The results: a critical, sober, yet lively and engrossing look at perhaps the century's most amazing religious figure.