Archbishop of Sydney

Modern Saints 1

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
10 November 2002

Saints are outstanding followers of Christ; outstanding for their faith and goodness, and for their love and service of others. They are not necessarily very pious and other-worldly. In fact, they are a very mixed bag of men and women.

Mary MacKillop is the only Australian who is on the way to meeting all the official requirements to be recognized by the Church as a saint.

a saint is simply someone who has made it to heaven, and so in this sense we are all called to be saints. Saints are not alternatives to God. They are examples of how to follow Jesus.

Sometimes people speak of plaster saints, but saints are human beings of flesh and blood. Some had to overcome great difficulties and some had been great sinners. Some were outstanding from their early years, and others became saints through the way they chose to lay down their lives for God or other people.

Two very different modern saints are Padre Pio and Cardinal Francis Nguyen van Thuan. Padre Pio was canonised as a saint earlier this year. Cardinal Thuan died only recently, but a am sure that the goodness and heroism of his life will eventually lead to his being recognised as a saint as well.

Padre Pio, as Francesco Forgione came to be known, was born in 1887 in Pietrelcina in Italy, to a devout peasant family.

From an early age Francesco wanted to be a priest, and at 15, he joined the Capuchin friars, taking the religious name of Pio in honour of Saint Pius V, who was a great reforming pope. He was ordained a priest in 1910 and was assigned to San Giovanni Rotondo, an isolated agricultural community near the east coast of Italy.

St Pio was a great mystic and teacher. He was also famous as a confessor. A remember speaking to a society lady in Rome who went to him for confession, really just so she could say she had made confession to Padre Pio. She had no sooner begun when he told her that she talked like a parrot and he would not hear her confession.

Prayer was central to his life. He described it as "the key which opens God's heart." His motto was "pray, hope and do not worry."

In 1918 he received the Stigmata, the physical wounds of Christ in his own body, while praying. To the bafflement of doctors and specialists, these wounds would stay with him for his remaining 50 years.

St Pio acquired a great following during his life, providing help and spiritual guidance to people from all walks of life. In the post-war reconstruction of Italy he built a major hospital to care for the sick and to train doctors. He died on 23 September, 1968 and huge crowds attended his funeral.

Devotion to him remains immense. Over a million pilgrims visit his tomb at San Giovanni Rotondo each year a ordinary people touched by the love and holiness or this extraordinary man.