While enthusiasm for Padre Pio was growing among the faithful, a prelate and some priests, sadly upset by the situation created by the stigmatized monk’s fame, were spreading terrible slanders against him.
Newsroom (7/03/2024 15:46, Gaudium Press) The convent of San Giovanni Rotondo was part of the Archdiocese of Manfredonia, led by Archbishop Monsignor Pasquale Gagliardi. As enthusiasm for Padre Pio grew among the faithful, some priests from the village, along with this prelate, disturbed by the stigmatized monk’s fame, spread terrible slanders against him. Unfortunately, the worst was yet to come.
Fr. Agostino Gemelli, a Franciscan priest who had led a life away from religion until the age of 25, when he converted, visited Padre Pio in 1920 to examine his stigmata. However, the authorities had decreed the previous year that any examination of the religious’s wounds would only take place with the written authorization of the Holy Office and the Capuchin superior. Lacking such authorization, Padre Pio couldn’t display the signs of the Passion. Disgruntled, Gemelli claimed everywhere that the wounds were self-inflicted, asserting that he had examined them himself.
On January 22, 1922, Pope Benedict XIV died, and Pius XI, a friend of Father Gemelli, ascended to the pontifical throne. Not three months after his coronation, the Holy Office decided to place Padre Pio under observation.
In May of the following year, a severe condemnation of Padre Pio was published,
urging the transfer of him to another convent. Despite a canonical error in the document, efforts were made to enforce the decisions. However, the pressure from the population made it impossible to transfer the Italian saint without using force.
In the face of such injustice, Emmanuele Brunatto, converted after a radical Confession with the saint and considered his “first spiritual son,” did not remain passive.
An example of resistance to persecution
Emmanuele Brunatto
Brunatto began investigating the less-than-exemplary life of Padre Pio’s persecutors. He gathered considerable evidence and promptly left for Rome to inform the Holy See. Unfortunately, the results were meager. There, he only found support from St. Louis Orione and Cardinals Pietro Gasparri and Merry del Val. Brunatto noticed that the hostility to Padre Pio wasn’t just from a simple Bishop of Manfredonia and a few canons.
Deciding on more radical means, on April 21, 1926, he wrote the book “Padre Pio de Pietrelcina,” condemned by the Vatican two days after its publication. In it, he revealed the true moral character of those slanderers.
Despite the condemnation, positive results were achieved: the appointment of an apostolic visitator to correct the moral deviations denounced and Brunatto’s appointment as an assistant. As for Archbishop Gagliardi, he was dismissed from his post a few years later after an investigation requested by the priests of his archdiocese due to long-standing horrors too disgraceful to record here.
A “bomb book”
After a while, Cardinal Merry del Val commissioned Brunatto to investigate the licentious habits of certain personalities in the highest religious spheres, a task he successfully completed. Armed with the obtained information, he decided, as a way of exerting pressure to free Padre Pio, to circulate a Letter to the Church. In it, he made public the appalling moral life of his spiritual father’s persecutors, some holding high ecclesiastical dignities.
This time, however, the result was not favorable. In response, a decree was published obliging Padre Pio to celebrate Mass only within the convent’s walls, not in a public church, and taking away his other faculties of ministry. If Brunatto had combined his impetus with wise diplomacy, perhaps the outcome would have been different.
His friend and assistant, lawyer Francesco Morcaldi, also lacked cunning. He allowed himself to be persuaded by certain authorities to hand over various documents he possessed, the basis for drafting the Letter to the Church, in exchange for a supposed “liberating measure,” which was never taken concerning Padre Pio.
Disillusioned, Brunatto decided not to yield an inch and published a “bombshell book” in 1932: The Antichrists in the Church of Christ.
In it, he denounced not only the declared enemies of the stigmatized friar but also other high-ranking personalities demeaning the dignity of their office with their behavior.
The result was immediate: on July 14, 1933, Padre Pio was free. Pope Pius XI himself stated that it was “the first time in the history of the Church that the Holy Office had gone back on its decrees.”
Prelude to a new persecution
The Franciscan saint enjoyed peaceful living for another thirty years.
Miracles and cures continued, and devotees multiplied. However, he was far from free of his persecutors.
The economic situation of the Capuchins in Italy became critical, particularly in Foggia, where the religious had deposited large sums with a famous banker, Giuffrè, who went bankrupt. Everything they had given him was reduced to nothing.
Padre Pio had never been involved in such a case and had warned his fellow friars against it. Seeking the Kingdom of God and its justice, he trusted that the rest would be given to him as well (cf. Mt 6:33). Donations flowed in abundance, enabling the saint to support a hospital he had built, the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, whose property had been donated by Emmanuele Brunatto himself.
However, some of Padre Pio’s confreres began embezzling the donations intended for him. The news reached the Vatican, and Msgr. Mario Crovini was tasked with investigating the situation, unfortunately real. Consequently, the culprits faced some sanctions. However, as soon as the mission was over, Pope John XXIII consented to a request from the Capuchin Minister General: an apostolic visitation to end Padre Pio’s “incapacity” to govern the hospital.
Once this decision was made, some of Padre Pio’s confreres began “investigating” him, placing tape recorders in various places of his privacy, such as in his cell and even in his confessional – a real sacrilege! However, they claimed to be obeying orders from above.
Partiality and injustice from the visitators
The apostolic visitator, Monsignor Carlo Maccari, went into action on July 29, 1960. The first person he visited was Michele De Nittis, one of the canons of San Giovanni Rotondo who had fiercely slandered Padre Pio in the 1920s. While he continued his work, his assistant, Fr. Giovanni Barberini – the same man who later claimed that one blessing from the apostolic visitator was worth more than a thousand absolutions from Padre Pio – spent time in the city’s bars and restaurants, finding nothing in the Capuchin’s entire book that could be used against him.
The investigation was supposed to end on October 2, but both visitators left the convent on September 17. Despite the lack of real motives, harsh restrictive measures were taken regarding the saint’s contact with the faithful.
The “White Paper”
On October 3, the Vatican published Monsignor Maccari’s dispositions regarding Padre Pio, claiming they aimed at “protecting the Church from deleterious forms of fanaticism.” Condemnations followed one after the other, and everyone, especially Brunatto, feared Padre Pio would be ousted from the hospital’s government.
To defend his spiritual father, Emmanuele Brunatto sent a warm letter to the Holy Office, stating that he was ready to “put an end to the infernal cabal that has already lasted a third of a century if anyone touches Padre Pio’s freedom, or if changes are made to the structure of his work [the hospital] without his consent and ours.”
Meanwhile, the condemnations continued. Having no other choice, he decided to make public the fact of the tape recorders placed in Padre Pio’s confessional. It wasn’t long before a Cardinal from the Holy Office came to visit him to restore peace. An agreement was made: Brunatto would stop publishing, and Padre Pio would remain in charge of the hospital.
However, once again, they didn’t keep their word: in the same month, Padre Pio’s superiors forced him to sign a document dispossessing him of the property.
As a last resort, Padre Pio’s defender gathered all the documents he had accumulated from the 1920s to the 1960s and made a compilation, called the White Book.
However, its publication was delayed due to the death of Pope John XXIII. Brunatto only sent a copy of the document to the UN Secretary-General, the President of the Italian Republic, and the new Pope, Paul VI.
In fact, it wasn’t long before the Pontiff took the initiative to release the Capuchin saint in 1964. However, since Brunatto didn’t know about it, he was forced to publish his controversial work, which had many repercussions, especially among the ecclesiastical authorities gathered for the Second Vatican Council.
A mysterious death
A year later, on the night of February 9-10, 1965, Emmanuele Brunatto was found dead in his home, the victim, according to the authorities, of a heart attack. However, some of his companions raised other hypotheses, such as strychnine poisoning. It should be noted that he used to buy his dinner every day at a nearby restaurant.
Needless to say, this man, defender of the truth and persecutor of the Church’s enemies, was hated as much as Padre Pio himself, because, in reality, God was hated in their person.
We know, however, that as long as there are men on earth who are living representatives of God and integrity, they will always be the object of persecution and hatred from those who plot iniquity. And that is precisely why the Lord will never deprive his Church of the presence of “Emmanueles Brunattos,” persecutors of evil who know how to unmask the enemies of the truth at the right time.
Text taken, with adaptations, from the Heralds of the Gospel Magazine no. 244, April 2022. By Lucas Rezende de Sousa.
Compiled by Carlos Ruiz
