Kathy Kopresski holds a prayer card with the image of Padre Pio as she leads prayers at the Padre Pio Shrine on Harding Highway. Landisville, on Wednesday, June 20. The Capuchin friar was canonized 10 years ago, on June 16, 2002, by Pope John Paul II. In his homily during the canonization Mass, the pope said the holiness of Padre Pio — who was well-known for bearing the stigmata, or bleeding wounds of Christ — could not be understood without the friar’s attachment to asceticism and the crucified Christ’s suffering. “The life and mission of Padre Pio give testimony that difficulty and suffering, if accepted with love, transform themselves into a privileged path of sanctity, opening toward a larger good that is known only to the Lord,” he said.
Photo by Alan M. Dumoff, ccdphotolibrary.smugmug.com
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